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Anti-mo-ny.

Equivalent, 129.03. (Symbol, Sb: Stibium.) Specific gravity, 6.8. Melts at 995.5, Fah.; passes off in vapor at a white heat. It has a peculiar taste and smell. It is a bluish-white, brittle metal, and is much used in hardening type-metal, to which it also imparts the faculty of not shrinking in cooling. It enters into the composition of some other alloys, such as one kind of speculum metal.

Its salts are much used in medicine and pyrotechnics.

Antimony was known to the Hebrews as a cosmetic. With it, it is supposed that the wicked Jezebel painted her eyelids and eyebrows, B. C. 884, just before she was thrown out of window by the orders of the cruel Jehu, who trod her under the feet of his horse, and left her to be devoured by dogs.

The Arab women use kohl to increase the brilliancy of the expression of their eves, as the Hebrew women did down to the times of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and later. It is yet an Oriental custom. Little toilet boxes and bottles for kohl are found among the relies of the ancient Egyptians, and are preserved in many collections; for instance, in the Abbott Collection in the possession of the Historical Society of New York.

Basil Valentine introduced the metal antimony into the practice of medicine. Observing that some swine fattened surprisingly quick after the administration of the drug, he tried it on some of the monks in his vicinity, who had become much attenuated by their Lenten fast. The account says that they were all killed, and hence the name Anti-moine. It was previously called Stibium, and yet retains that title in scientific nomenclature.

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