102 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &e.
imaginations,
unfettered by experiment. This connection of ideas is still perpetuated
in the French word for Loadstone, " Pierre d'Aimant," from the low
Latin " petra de Adamante," which in another form gives " Diamant." The
Orientals, improving upon this notion, assigned to the Diamond a discriminating magnetism
consistent with its own pre-eminent dignity; for Ben Mansur states,
"the Diamond has an affinity for gold, small particles of which fly
towards it. It is also wonderfully sought after by ants, which crowd
over it as though they would swallow it up." Though an antidote against
all poisons when worn on the finger, yet during the Middle Ages it was
considered the most deadly of all if swallowed. This is laid down as an
indubitable fact by the eminent physician Camillo, writing in 1502.
Thus Cellini tells how his life was preserved from the machinations of
his enemy P. L. Farnese by the roguery of the apothecary, who, being
employed to pulverize a Diamond intended to season the artist's salad,
substituted a bit of " citrino," beryl, in its stead. It is
likewise enumerated amongst the poisons administered to Sir T. Overbury
when a prisoner in the Tower. Garcias takes some pains to overthrow
this long-established opinion, by quoting instances of slaves in the
mines swallowing large Diamonds, for the sake of embezzling them,
without the least injury to their stomachs : and a woman (in a case
known to him) had administered doses of diamond-dust for many days
continuously to her husband labouring under a dysentery (not as it
seems for the sake of putting him out of his misery but on homeopathic principles) without the slightest effects erEBer good or bad.
DIAMOND- CUTTING. Laborde (' Glossaire,' p. 250) labours hard to claim for his countrymen the invention of Diamond-cutting, and at
