156 THE CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
not
the nature of that." She said that he was a fool, and gave him pieces
of gold, and bade him buy some of that powder for her. It appears,
however, from the testimony, that a number of ingredients were
employed, quite probably small doses of mercury, cantharides, etc., as
well as the baleful diamond dust. Poor Overbury lingered on for more
than three months, but was finally put out of his misery by a clyster
of corrosive sublimate.18
As
a proof of the deadly effects caused by the diamond, the Portuguese
Zacutus relates the case of a merchant's servant who surreptitiously
swallowed three rough diamonds belonging to his master. On the
following day this man was seized with violent abdominal pains, all
the remedies administered to him were without effect, and he soon died
from the extensive internal ulceration produced by the sharp edges of
the diamonds.19
This
old fancy that diamonds or diamond dust had deadly effects when
swallowed is pretty well exploded by this time, little or no
confirmation being afforded by the instances cited in the matter.
However, quite recently it has been shown that swallowing a diamond can
prove fatal to a fowl. While a prize-winning cockerel was being fondled
by his proud owner, it spied a flashing diamond set in a ring in his
hand, and immediately pecked out the stone and swallowed it. Not long
after, the fowl died—not, however, because it was poisoned by the
diamond, but because it was chloroformed to insure the speedy recovery
of the stone.
An old English ballad, treating of the loves of Hind Horn and Maid Eimnild, recounts that when Hind Horn,
"Amos, "The Great Oyer of Poisoning," London, 1846, pp. 336 sqq.
w Aldrovandi, " Museum metallicum," Bononiae, 1648, p. 949.
