nge-coloured sulphide in a little hydrochloric
acid. If the solution be now added to a large bulk of water, the white
oxychloride is precipitated, which is soluble in tartaric acid and
precipitated orange yellow with hydrogen sulphide. The chloride of
bismuth is also precipitated white, but the precipitate is not soluble
in tartaric acid, and the precipitate with hydrogen sulphide is black.

_Tests._--Soluble in water, but not in alcohol.

Heated in substance, it crepitates and chars; and if heat be increased,
the metal is deposited. Treated with sulphuretted hydrogen, a
characteristic orange-red sulphide is formed.

A drop of the solution evaporated leaves crystals, either tetrahedric,
or cubes with edges bevelled off. Sulphuretted hydrogen passed through
gives the orange-red precipitate above named. Dilute nitric acid gives a
white precipitate, soluble in excess, and also in tartaric acid. Marsh's
and Reinsch's processes are applicable for the detection of antimony,
but Reinsch's is the better. Reinsch's process gives a violet deposit
instead of the black, lustrous one of arsenic.

=Chloride of Antimony= (Butter of Antimony).--A light yellow or dark red
corrosive liquid.

_Symptoms._--Violet corrosion and irritation of the alimentary canal,
with the addition of narcotic symptoms. After death the mucous membrane
of the entire canal is charred, softened, and abraded.

_Treatment._--As for tartar emetic; magnesia in milk.

XXIII.--MERCURY AND ITS PREPARATIONS

The most important salt of mercury, toxicologically, is corrosive
sublimate. Other poisonous preparations are red precipitate, white
precipitate, mercuric nitrate, the cyanide and potassio-mercuric iodide.
Calomel has very little toxic action. Metallic mercury is not poisonous,
but its vapour is.

=Corrosive Sublimate= (perchloride of mercury) is in heavy colourless
masses of prismatic crystals, possessing an acrid, metallic taste. It is
soluble in sixteen parts of cold and two of boiling water. Soluble in
alcohol and ether, the latter also separating it from its solution in
water.

_Symptoms_ come on rapidly. Acrid, metallic taste, constriction and
burning in throat and stomach, nausea, vomiting of stringy mucus tinged
with blood, tenesmus, purging. Feeble, quick, and irregular pulse,
dysuria with scanty, albuminous or bloody urine or total suppression.
Cramp, twitches and convulsions of limbs, occasionally paralysis. In
poisoning from the medi