chap, xxiv PORCUPINE STONE 119
larly
in.the species of monkeys which live in the Island of Macassar. This
kind of bezoar is round, while the other is of diverse forms, according
to the shapes of the buds and ends of branches which the goats have
eaten. As these stones, which it is believed come from monkeys, are
much rarer than the others, they are also much dearer and much more
sought after ; and when one is found of the size of a nut it is valued
at more than 100 ecus. The Portuguese, more than other nations, attach
great value to bezoar, because they are always on their guard, one
against the other, fearing that an enemy may wish to poison them.1
There
is still another much esteemed stone which is called the porcupine
stone, which this animal has in its head, and is more efficacious
against poison than bezoar. When it is placed to steep in water for a
quarter of an hour, the water becomes so bitter that there is nothing
in the world to equal it in bitterness.3 This animal has
also sometimes, in its belly, a stone which is of the same nature and
equally good as that which comes from the head, except with this
difference, that it loses nothing of its weight or size by steeping in
water, while there is diminution of the other. During my life I have
bought three of these stones. One cost me 500 ecus, and I disposed of
it subsequently with advantage to the Ambassador Dominico de Santis,3 of whom I have spoken in my accounts of Persia. I paid 400 ecus for another, which I still
1 Garcia da Orta (Drugs and Simples, 362
ff.), who devotes a chapter to bezoar, highly extols its merits as a
medicine in cases of ague, measles, as an antidote to poison, and in
the treatment of abscesses ; he mentions that it was supposed,
moreover, to possess aphrodisiac properties. It is not now believed to
have any therapeutic value—to be, in fact, neutral.
a
It seems probable that the substance supposed to be obtained in the
head of the porcupine was a vegetable drug, to which that mythical
origin was ascribed (Garcia da Orta, 470 f.). Castanheda mentions a
stone obtained in the head of an animal called bulgoldorf, which was
exceedingly rare, and was said to be an antidote against all kinds of
poison (Kerr, Voyages and Travels, ii. 439). A. Hamilton (in
Pinkerton, viii. 450) says that at Lingen, near Johore, he has seen
pieces of porcu-pine bezoar as big as, and shaped like, a walnut,
valued at 600 pieces of eight.
* See Persian Travels, Paris, 1576, bk. ii, ch. v, p. 181. He was an ambassador from the Venetian Republic.
