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330 PRECIOUS STONES.
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mineral is always opaque, with only a slight trans-lucency at the edges.
Lapis
Lazuli " is an open stone like a saphire,"— William Rowland, Doctor of
Physick, 1669,—" adorned with golden atoms, or flames, harder than the
Armenian stone ; it is called the Sky-coloured Stone, and is in vertue
like the Armenian-Stone but weaker ; it purgeth chiefly melancholy,
cures quartans, apoplexies, epilepsies, diseases of the spleen, and
many others from dementia." " It is worn about the neck for an amulet
to drive away frights from children ; it strengthens the sight,
prevents faintings, and abortion, but it must be taken near the time of
delivery lest it keep up the child." As an internal dose give one
drachm, (i.e., sixty grains,) in powder.
M. Pomet, in his History of Druggs, 1712,
tells respecting this Lapis Lazuli, or azure stone, " It is a heavy
stone, of a sky blue ; most frequently streaked with veins of copper,
which the Antients, and some Moderns, believ'd to be gold. It is a
silicate of alumina, calcium, and sodium; sulphur, too, being always
recorded. The chief use to which it is put is for making the
ultramarine, by being ground, calcined, and levigated in water. When it
is burnt to make ultramarine, it will stink extreamly, having a
sulphurous smell, which shows that it proceeds from copper, and not
from gold." There are authors who attribute great virtues to this
stone. •' Lapis Lazuli prepar'd purges melancholy humours, fortifies
the heart, and is used in the confection of Alkermes." This confection,
of " Scarlet Grain,"—our Coccus -Cacti,—Cochineal, was reckoned very
cordial, and proper to comfort women in child-bed, giving half a dram
of it, powdered, in an egg.
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