Europe. The name jade is derived from the Spanish designation, piedra de hijada, meaning
literaly "stone of the flank," which is said to have been bestowed on
the stone because the Indians used it for all diseases of the kidneys.
The name nephrite owes its origin to the same idea. In ancient times
jade appears to have been looked upon as a great aid in parturition,
and many ingenious conjectures have been advanced as to the connection
between this belief and the form of some of the prehistoric objects
made of this material. Whether the Spaniards really learned from the
Indians that the stone was especially adapted to cure renal diseases,
or whether they only suggested this special and peculiar virtue in
order to give an enhanced value to their jade ornaments, is a question
not easily answered.
An
early notice of jade as a remedial agent appears in Sir Walter
Raleigh's account of his travels in Guiana. Treating of a people of
"Amazons" said to dwell in the interior of the country, Raleigh says :27
These
Amazones have likewise great store of these plates of golde, which they
recover by exchange, chiefly for a kinde of greene stone, which the
Spaniards call Piedras Hijadas, and we use for spleene stones and for
the disease of the stone we also esteeme them : of these I saw divers
in Guiana, and commonly every King or Casique hath one, which theire wives for the most part weare, and they esteeme them as great jewels.
By
the middle of the seventeenth century the curative powers of jade for
the various forms of calculi was very generally admitted. A singular
instance is offered us in one of Voiture's letters. He was a great
sufferer from "the stone" and he had received, from a Mademoiselle
Paulet, a beautiful jade bracelet. Gratefully acknowl-
27
" The Discovery of the Large, Eich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana,"
London, 1848, p. 29, Hakluyt Pub. Originally published in 1596.
