sulfides
Stibnite
Sb2S3
- Also known as
- antimonitekohl
- Crystal system
- orthorhombic
- Hardness
- 2 on the Mohs scale
- Lustre
- metallic
- Colour
- Steel grey with an iridescent tarnish
- Where it forms
- In low-temperature hydrothermal veins. The Ichinokawa mine in Japan produced the finest crystals ever found, some over half a metre long.
- Chiefly from
- Ichinokawa, JapanHunan, ChinaRomaniaBolivia
Why it is that colour
Metallic lustre from the antimony sulfide itself. Fresh crystals are bright silver and dull to grey-black on exposure.
Safety
Antimony sulfide. Antimony is toxic and chemically similar to arsenic. The crystals are soft and shed easily, and their needle-sharp terminations are a physical hazard in their own right. Do not powder, do not ingest, do not put in water, and wash after handling.
Where it comes from
China dominates world antimony production, and antimony is on several countries’ critical minerals lists because of its use in flame retardants, batteries and munitions. Specimen material is a by-product.
Historical use
Antimony compounds were used medicinally in Europe for centuries as emetics — the perpetual pill, a reusable antimony pellet that induced vomiting and was recovered and passed down in families, is a real and unpleasant historical object. Mozart’s death has been speculatively attributed to antimony treatment.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. That a stone was used for something establishes that people used it, not that it worked.
What is attributed to it, and since when
Powdered stibnite was the black eye cosmetic of ancient Egypt and the Near East — kohl — and its use is documented for at least five thousand years. Some traditional kohl preparations still contain antimony or lead sulfide, and lead poisoning from imported kohl has prompted health warnings in the UK, the US and Australia.
Described, not endorsed. Dating a claim is not the same as assessing it — but an association that first appears in a book published in 1985 is not an ancient inheritance, whatever the label says. A sincere account of feeling better is compatible with the stone doing nothing — see the placebo effect.
Worth knowing
The perpetual pill deserves to be better known as an object lesson in pre-modern medicine. Antimony metal, cast into a small pellet and swallowed, irritates the gut enough to cause vomiting, then passes through unchanged. It could be washed and used again. Families kept them and bequeathed them in wills.
The logic was humoral — purging removed corrupted matter — and within that framework it worked exactly as intended, which is the difficulty. A treatment that reliably produces a dramatic visible effect is very hard to abandon, whether or not the effect helps.
Identity checked against IMA-CNMNC master list, June 2025.