Observations on antimony

In 1774, the Scottish physician John Millar turned his attention to one of chemistry's most paradoxical substances: antimony, a metal that had spent centuries shuttling between the apothecary's shelf and the poisoner's cabinet. This isn't a book of dramatic discoveries but something more subtle and perhaps more fascinating: a careful, rational reckoning with a substance that had been praised as a panacea and condemned as a killer for generations. Millar traces antimony's long history in medicine, examining the wild claims made for it, the accidents and deaths it caused, and the stubborn refusal of physicians to abandon a remedy that seemed to work even when it threatened to kill. He interrogates the received wisdom of centuries, distinguishing between genuine therapeutic effects and the dangerous folklore that had accumulated around this glittering, poisonous metal. The result is a window into how early chemistry stood at the crossroads between superstition and science, where a curious mind might overturn centuries of medical orthodoxy armed with nothing but careful observation and a willingness to question. For readers drawn to the history of science, this small volume offers a vivid portrait of medicine in the age when alchemy was giving way to chemistry, and when the distinction between remedy and poison was still being written.