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Lapis Nephriticus Jade

Naxium, Emery Page of 384 Lapis Nephriticus Jade Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
LAPIS NEPHRIT1CUS.
203
LAPIS NEPHRITICUS: Jade.
This singular mineral is a combination of magnesia and silica, with small proportions of alumina and the oxides of iron and chrome. In colour it varies from a soapy greenish white, with a waxy surface, to a clear agreeable olive—the most esteemed shade. The Egyptian kind, Corsi states, is the greenest of all, approximating in beauty to the Chry­soprase. This substance is excessively hard, tough, and difficult to work, almost insuperable by emery, and requiring the employment of diamond powder in the operation. It therefore appears to have baffled the skill not merely of the ancients, but even of the difficulty-courting artists of the Eevival, no work exhibiting the well-known style of that period existing in Jade ; and yet the latter had every inducement to essay this material in the high reputation it enjoyed in their own times.
This reputation rested upon its well-accredited virtue as a specific remedy, or rather as a prophylactic, against all diseases of the kidneys, which gives it its present popular name, corrupted by the French from pietra di hijada (kidney-stone) as the Spaniards had christened it. They had intro­duced the stone together with (as it would appear) the belief in its peculiar virtue from the New World very soon after its discovery. In its efficacy even the practical De Boot was evidently a firm believer ; and the prices quoted by him equally testify to the general faith in its medicinal
Naxium, Emery Page of 384 Lapis Nephriticus Jade
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