ON THERAPEUTIC USES OF STONES 375
saphiers,
emeralls and other precious stones that ar rich in vallew; cost 70
thousand marckes sterlinge of David Gower from the fowlkers of
Ousborghe.' Seek owt for som spiders." Caused his phiziccians, Johannes
Lloff, to scrape a circle thereof upon the tahell; putt within it one
spider and so one other and died, and some other without that ran alive
apace from it.—" It is too late, it will not preserve me. Behold these
precious stones. This diomond is the orients richest and most precious
of all other. I never affected it; yt restreyns furie and luxurie and
abstinacie and chasticie; the least parcell of it in powder will poysen
a horse geaven to drinck, much more a man." Poynts at the ruby. " Oh !
this is most comfortable to the hart, braine, vigar and memorie of man,
clarifies congelled and corrupt bloud."—Then at the emerald.—" The
natur of the reyn-bowe ; this precious stone is an enemye to
uncleanness. The saphier I greatlie delight in ; yt preserves and
increaseth courage, joies the hart, pleasinge to all the vitali sensis,
precious and verie soveraigne for the eys, clears the sight, takes
awaye bloudshott and streingthens the mussells and strings
thereof."—Then takes the onex in haftd.—" All these are Gods wonderfull
guifts, secreats in natur, and yet réveils [reveals] them to mans use
and con-templacion, as frendes to grace and vertue and enymies to vice.
I fainte, carie me awaye till an other tyme."
Some
believed that when precious stones were worn to relieve or prevent
disease, it was important that the different stones should be worn on
different parts of the body. According to one authority, the jacinth
should be worn on the neck ; the diamond, on the left arm ; the
sapphire, on the ring-finger ; the emerald, or the jacinth, on the
index-finger ; and the ruby or turquoise, on either the index-finger or
the little finger.7 There is, however, little reason to assume that these rules were generally known and observed.
That precious stones not only appealed to the eye by
* The Fuggers of Augsburg, the jeweller bankers of the 15th and 16th centuries.
* Wolffii,
" Curiosus amuletorum scrutator," Francofurti et Lipsia?, 1692, p. 363;
citing Rodolphus Goclenius (De peste, p. 70).
