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DIAMONDS. 65
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indyed hym with greatter vertues than many other stones."
The
material basis of the Diamond (carbon) is to be found almost everywhere
: in the bread we eat, in our sugar, in the wood, and the coal which we
burn ; but then in an uncrystallised state, being opaque, and easily
frangible. When crystallised as a diamond it is the hardest substance
known (though the amorphous variety of diamond, a carbonate, whilst of
precisely the same chemical composition, and of a nearly equal specific
gravity, is black, lustreless, and degraded to the mere purpose of
cutting, and polishing other gems).
The
designation " Adamant," now transferred to the Blood Stone, was
certainly bestowed on the Diamond in former times. Juvenal, without
doubt, told thus of the Diamond as adorning the finger of Berenice :—
" Adamas notissimus, et Berenices In digito factus pretiosior."
Whilst
reputed to be an antidote to all poisons when worn as a finger-jewel,
yet the Diamond, if swallowed, was considered, during the Middle Ages,
to be the most deadly of substances. It was among the poisons
administered to Sir Thomas Overbury when a prisoner in the Tower of
London. Yet such is by no means the real fact. Garcius tells of slaves
in the mines swallowing large diamonds for the purpose of stealing
them, but without the least bodily injury being sustained by their so
doing. He also writes of a woman known to him who administered doses of
diamond-dust for many days together to her husband (troubled by
dysentery), but without producing the least effect. The natives of
India, says Harry Emanuel, " imagine
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