that
when diamond powder is taken into the mouth, it causes the teeth to
fall out; also that it acts as a preservative against lightning."
Tavernier
(1676) was the first to visit the famous diamond mines of Golcondah
(Hindostan). Serapion (1473) ascribed to the Diamond a power of driving
away lemures (ghosts), incubes (nightmares), and succubos (calamities)
; also of making men courageous, and magnanimous ; he said further that
if this gem be placed in proximity to a loadstone, it multiplies the
power thereof. The Diamond is found of all colours : white, yellow,
orange, red, pink, brown, green, blue, and opalescent.
Camillus Leonardus, in his Mirror of Stones (translated
into English, 1750), wrote concerning the Adamant (Diamond) : " It is a
help to lunaticks, and such as are possessed with the devil; being
bound to the left arm it gives victory over enemies ; it tames wild
beasts; it helps those who are troubled with phantasms, and the
night-mare, making him that wears it bold, and daring in his
transactions."
The Honble. Robert Boyle (1692) treating Of Experimental Phihsophie, said,
" Even in divers minerals, as we may see in nitre, chrystal, and
several others, the figures that are admired are not produc'd by
chance, but by something analogous to seminal principles, as may appear
by their uniform regularity in the same sort of concretions, and by the
practice of some of the skilfullest of the salt-peter men ; who, when
they have drawn as much nitre as they can out of the nitrous earth,
cast not the earth away, but preserve it in heaps, for six or seven
years ; at the end of which time they finde it impregnated with new
