of
Jasper, of divers colour, somewhat dark, full of sprinkles like to
blood, these being of colour red : of which stones the Indians doth
make certaine Hartes, both great and small; the use thereof, both there
and here, is for all fluxes of blood, and of wounds. The stone must be
wet in cold water ; and the sick man must take him in his right hand,
and from time to time wet him in cold water. In this sort the Indians
doe use them. And as concerning the Indians they have it for certain
that touching the same Stone in some part where the blood runneth, that
it doth restrain ; and in this they have great trust; for that the
effect hath been seen." In An Essay about the Origine, and Virtues vf Gems, the
Honble. Robert Boyle, 1675, London, has written : "I know a Gentleman
(a professed Scholar) who to the eye seems to be of a complexion
extraordinary sanguine. This person was for a long time so troubled
with excessive bleedings at the nose that, notwithstanding all the
remedies that he could procure in an Academy of Physick present where
he lived, he was divers times brought to Death's door ; till at length,
his case growing very famoxis, there was sent him by an antient
Gentleman a Bloodstone—about the bigness of a Pigeon's egg,—with an
assurance that it had done cures scarce credible, in his disease, by
being worn about the Patient's neck. Upon the use of this Stone he
quickly recovered his Health ; and had long enjoyed it when I conversed
with him ; but yet when he left the Stone off for any considerable time
his distemper would return. Furthermore, he had by the hands of a third
person that liv'd not far distant, stop'd a hemorrhage in a
neighbouring gentlewoman whom the violence of the distemper kep't from
knowing that
