160 THE CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
from
pseudo-Aristotle offers an illustration of the strength of this
prejudice against the onyx, which was said to come from China and the
Magreb: 26
Those
who are in the land of China fear this stone so much that they dread to
go into the mines where it occurs; hence none but slaves and menials,
who have no other means of gaining a livelihood, take the stone from
the mines. When it has been extracted, it is carried out of the country
and sold in other lands. Those men of the Magreb also who are gifted
with any wisdom will not wear an onyx or place it in their treasuries.
Indeed, no one is willing to wear it, unless he be bereft of his
senses; for whosoever wears it, either set in a ring or in any other
way, will have fearful dreams and be tormented by a multitude of
doubts and apprehensions; he will also have many disputes and lawsuits.
Lastly, whoever keeps an onyx in his house, or places it in a vessel,
or puts it in food or drink, will suffer loss of energy and capacity.
An
ominous character was attributed to the red coral, especially the more
highly colored varieties. If worn so that the substance came in direct
contact with the skin, it was asserted that the color would pale, the
coral also losing its brightness if the wearer became ill, or even if
he were only threatened with severe illness. The same effect was said
to be induced if some deadly poison had been taken. Cardano writes that
he more than once observed this phenomenon, and he thinks that in these
cases, where the wearer was not yet attacked by disease, its
threatening "vapor," though not strong enough to provoke decided
symptoms in the human body, was sufficiently powerful to offset the
more delicate and subtle essence of the mineral substance. Of course,
for us the mineral would be much less sensitive than flesh and blood,
but the sixteenth century writers, and to a still greater
" Rose, Aristoteles De lapidibus and Arnoldus Saxo, Zeitschr. fur D. Alt., New Series, vol. vi, 1875, pp. 360, 361.
