contained more of the sesquioxide. The Edinburgh and Dublin Pharmacopœias of 1826 ordered simply scales of iron collected from a blacksmith's anvil, purified by applying a magnet, and reduced to a fine powder. This was a favourite preparation of iron with Sydenham. Made into pills with extract of wormwood, the Ethiops Martial constituted the pilula ferri of Swediaur.
Ethiopic pills were similar to Plummer's pills (pil. calomel. co.) Guy's ethiopic powder was once a well-known remedy for worms. It was composed of equal parts of pure rasped tin, mercury, and sulphur. Vegetable ethiops was the ashes of fucus vesiculosus which were given in scrofulous complaints and in goitre before iodine was discovered. The ashes contain a small proportion of iodine. Dr. Runel ("Dissertation on the Use of Sea Water," 1759) says it far exceeds burnt sponge in virtue.
Huxham recommended an Aethiops Antimoniale, composed of two parts of sulphide of antimony and one part of flowers of sulphur. The older Aethiops Antimoniale was a combination of antimony chloride with mercury, and was given in venereal and scrofulous complaints. Mercury with chalk was sometimes called absorbent ethiops, or alkalised ethiops.
Iodine
was discovered by Bernard Courtois in 1811. Courtois, who was born at Dijon in 1777, was apprenticed to a pharmacist at Auxerre named Fremy, grandfather of the noted chemist of that name, and was afterwards associated as assistant with Seguin, Thenard, and Fourcroy. He had worked with the first-named of these in the isolation of the active principle of opium, whereby Seguin so nearly secured the glory of the discovery of
