ANTIMONY IN MEDICINE So far back as Basil Valentine and Paracelsus, antimonial prep arations were in great vogue as medicinal agents, and came to be so much abused that a prohibition was placed upon their em ployment by the Paris parliament in 1566. Metallic antimony was utilized to make goblets in which wine was allowed to stand so as to acquire emetic properties, and "everlasting" pills of the metal, supposed to act by contact merely, or by slight solution, were administered and recovered for future use of ter they had fulfilled their purpose. Antimony compounds act as irritants both externally and internally. Tartar emetic acts directly on the wall of the stomach, producing vomiting, and continues this effect by its action on the medulla. It is a powerful cardiac depressant, diminishing both the force and frequency of the heart's beat. It depresses respiration, and in large doses lowers temperature. It depresses the nervous system, especially the spinal cord. It is excreted by all the secretions and excretions of the body. Thus as it passes out by the bronchial mucous membrane it increases the amount of secretion and so acts as an expectorant. On the skin its action is that cf a diaphoretic, and being also excreted by the bile it acts slightly as a cholagogue. The medicinal uses of the older forms of antimony compounds may be summed up in the words diaphoretic, febrifuge, parasiticidal and emetic. Anti mony trioxide or potassium antimonyl tartrate are employed for the first two purposes, whereas the synonym, tartar emetic, for the latter salt indicates that antimony compounds are of value in certain cases of poisoning.
It has long been known that antimony has medicinal proper ties similar to those of arsenic, and modern scientific developments in therapeutic chemistry have tended to produce antimonial sub stitutes of the phenylarsonic acid and arsenobenzol types in order to obtain remedies of greater utility. The antimony analogue of arsenobenzol has been made, but clinical experience has proved it to be of little value. Compounds of the nature of urea-stibamine (urea and p-aminophenylstibinic acid) have been used in kala azar. Other analogous aromatic stibinates also employed intrave nously are sodium metachloro-para-acetylaminophenyl-stibinate (I.) , a drug of low toxicity and high parasitotropic value, and stibamine glucoside (II.) which, under the name of neostam, is a very efficacious remedy used extensively against kala-azar, espe cially in Assam.
Interesting results have attended the modern use of tartar emetic and the allied sodium antimonyl tartrate in bilharziasis, and the affection of a similar type known as schistosomiasis. The compound is given on the recommendation of J. B. Christopher son (1919) intravenously in these affections. The important point is that these drugs kill the ova in addition to the worm. These two compounds have been used successfully in various forms of Leishmania infection, such as kala-azar, oriental sore and American Leishmaniasis, together with many other tropical affections. These diseases have also been treated with promising results by injections of a glycerin solution of antimony trioxide.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—G. A. Roush and A. Butts, The Mineral Industry, Bibliography.—G. A. Roush and A. Butts, The Mineral Industry, its Statistics, Technology and Trade, vol. xxxiv. (1926) ; G. T. Morgan, Organic Compounds of Arsenic and Antimony (1918) ; W. G. Christian sen, Organic Derivatives of Antimony (1925). (G. T. M.)