Had, therefore, the Inventor discovered a method of divesting this Proteus-like mineral of all pernicious qualities, and rendering it a medicine invariably safe and efficacious, however combined with other remedies, or mixed with a variety of humours, food, and drink in the stomach, his powder would have been more proper for common use, and might have been trusted, in unskilful hands, with less danger, than other antimonial preparations. But it does not in this respect lay any claim to superiority. _Supposing_, says the Inventor, _physicians perfectly well skilled in the preparation and uses of it, that knowledge will inform them, that nothing can be added to it that will in any degree increase its virtues; or rather that no addition can be made to it that will not diminish them_[75].
By this frank declaration we understand that the fever-powder retains the mutability of antimony, and is, from slight accidents, changed from a salutary medicine to a noxious substance; and hence proceeds the Inventor’s anxiety to prevent improper combinations. But the dread of dangerous consequences, or some other cause, has led him unwarily and inconsistently to depreciate his powder, and reduce it below all other antimonial preparations; for though by certain additions the virtues of antimony may be diminished, yet by others they may be improved; and this, it is probable, from the known properties of that mineral, will also hold with the fever-powder, although the contrary is here expressly asserted.
But, lest the assertion should give unfavourable impressions, it is immediately retracted; and we are told that, _occasion may sometimes occur of employing, advantageously, a regimen, or even medicine, when judgment directs and integrity presides_[76]. and again: _It sometimes happens, when little or no putrid bile is contained in the stomach, bowels, &c. &c. that the powder, though given in the largest doses, will have no sensible operation of any kind whatever. In these cases half, or a whole paper should be repeated every four or six hours. But on those occasions, it will be proper to procure two stools in twenty four hours, either by a clyster, which is the most easy way, or by giving, with every dose of the powder, from five to ten grains of rhubarb_[77]_. But in some constitutions where a putrid bile has very much abounded, and for this reason the stimulus of the medicine, added to that of the bile, has been apt to operate more than was sufficient, it has been necessary to reduce the dose so low as two or three grains_[78]: and thus, after a series of contradictions, the fever-powder, as might have been expected, is declared to require the addition of other medicines, and to be as uncertain in its operation as other antimonials.