professors,
popular notions are current that Amber is a sovereign panacea for
asthma, dropsy, toothache, and various other ailments. Another belief
is that it will serve to drive away adders. Dr. W. Salmon has ordered,
in his Family Dictionary, 1696: " For the falling sickness,
take half a drachm of choice Amber, powder it very fine, and take it
once a day in a quarter of a pint of white wine, for seven or eight
days successively." And again, " for a falling fundament," " Take bits
of Amber, and in a close-stool put them upon a chafing-dish of live
charcoal, over which let the patient sit, and receive the fumes."
In
such repute was Amber at Rome during Pliny's time that he sarcastically
observed, " The price of a small figure made therefrom, however
diminutive, exceeds that of a living, healthy slave." The substance was
further used there for producing imitations of precious stones by
artificial staining.
In England Amber has been found within the sandy deposits of the London clay, at Kensington.
This
translucent resin often furnishes within its substance the appearance
of enclosed foreign bodies, such as insects, leaves, twigs, etc., such
insects being mostly of extinct species, as likewise the remnants of
plants. The familiar term, " Flies in Amber," is proverbial for an
incongruous mixture of natural objects. " Admire " says Claudian, " the
magnificence of the tomb of a vile insect. No sovereign can boast one
so splendid."
" Non potuit tumulo nobiliore mori."
Eastern
folk entertain a feeling of veneration for Amber, because of its mystic
virtues, this sentiment serving to enhance the value of Amber thereby.
