Antimony

The symbol Sb comes from stibium, the Latin for the antimony sulfide that Egyptians ground into kohl for their eyes. Medieval and early-modern medicine used antimony compounds as violent emetics, sold as everlasting pills that were swallowed, passed and recovered for reuse; the treatment was contentious enough that the Paris medical faculty banned it for a century, and antimony poisoning is one of the standing hypotheses for Mozart's death. Its most elegant use was in printing: antimony is one of the few substances that expands as it freezes, so lead-tin-antimony type metal fills the mould completely and casts crisp letterforms, which is what made movable type practical for five centuries. Today most antimony goes into antimony trioxide, the synergist that makes halogenated flame retardants work, and into the grids of lead-acid batteries.