Bismuth, the metal, was not known to the ancients nor to the Arabs. It
was first mentioned under that name by Agricola, in 1546, in “De Natura
Fossilium,” and was not then regarded as a distinct body. Agricola
considered it to be a form of lead, and other mining chemists believed
that it gradually changed into silver. The Magistery (trisnitrate or
oxynitrate) was the secret blanc de fard which Lemery sold in large
quantities as a cosmetic. He bought the secret from an unknown chemist
and made a large fortune out of it. His process was to dissolve one
ounce of the metal in two ounces of nitric acid and to pour on the
solution five or six pints of water in which one ounce of sea-salt
had been dissolved. The sea-salt would yield a proportion of bismuth
oxychloride in the precipitate. Lemery made a pomatum, ʒi to the
ounce, and a lotion, ʒi to ʒiv of lily water.
Until the latter part of the eighteenth century bismuth salts were
regarded as poisonous and were scarcely used in medicine by way of
internal administration. Even Odier, of Geneva, to whom we owe the
introduction of this medicine in dyspepsia and diarrhœa, prescribed it
in 1 grain doses with 10 grains each of magnesia and sugar.
Lemery says the bismuth of his time was a compound made in England from
the gross and impure tin found in the English mines. “The workmen mix
this tin with equal parts of tartar and saltpetre. This mixture they
throw by degrees into crucibles made red hot in a large fire. When
this is melted they pour it into greased iron mortars and let it cool.
Afterwards they separate the regulus at the bottom from the scoriæ and
wash it well. This is the tin-glass, which may be called the regulus of
tin.” Pomet says much the same about the composition. He adds, “It is
so true that tin-glass is artificial that I have made it myself, and am
ready to show it to those who won’t believe me.”
Those writers belonged to the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
A quarter of a century later Quincy is telling us that the metal called
Bismuth “is composed of tin, tartar, and arsenic, made in the northern
parts of Germany, and from thence brought to England.”
Meanwhile Stahl and Dufay had been studying bismuth and had established
its character and elementary nature.
Liquor Bismuthi et Ammonii Citratis was introduced into the B.P. 1867,
as an imitation of the proprietary Liquor Bismuthi, which Mr. G. F.
Schacht, pharmaceutical chemist, of Clifton, had invented a few years
previously. It was found that the official preparation differed from
the proprietary one in taste and action principally because no attempt
had been made to free it from the nitric acid used to dissolve the
bismuth. This was corrected in 1885 by a liquor prepared from citrate
of bismuth dissolved by solution of ammonia. This method has been
further elaborated. Continental physicians have not favoured a solution
of bismuth. They consider that the remedial value of bismuth depends on
its insolubility; this view now obtains in England also.
Trochisci Bismuthi Compositi of the B.P. 1864, were believed to
be intended to imitate the “Heartburn Tablets,” made by Dr. Burt,
an eminent medical practitioner of Edinburgh in the early part
of the nineteenth century, and sold for him at a guinea a pound.
Notwithstanding the price, perhaps because of it, these tablets
attained to considerable popularity. It was said that Dr. Burt and his
apprentices made all he supplied in his kitchen. Some said that his
tablets contained no bismuth, the antacid properties being due entirely
to chalk. In 1867 rose-flavour was substituted for cinnamon in the
official lozenges, and in 1898 the oxynitrate of bismuth gave place to
oxycarbonate.