390 CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
of the stone by those upon whom it was used, and this faith may really have helped to hasten their recovery.44
A
historical instance of the use of the bloodstone to check a hemorrhage
is recorded in the case of Giorgio Vasari (1514-1578), the author of
the lives of the Italian painters of the Renaissance period. On a
certain occasion, when the painter Luca Signorelli (1439-1521) was
placing one of his pictures in a church at Arezzo, Vasari, who was
present, was seized with a violent hemorrhage and fainted away. Without
a moment's hesitation, Signorelli took from his pocket a bloodstone
amulet and slipped it down between Vasari's shoulder-blades. The
hemorrhage is said to have ceased immediately.45
The
bloodstone was used as a remedy by the Indians of New Spain, and
Monardes notes that they often cut the material into the shape of
hearts. This seems a very appropriate form for an object used to check
hemorrhages. The best effect was attained when the stone was first
dipped in cold water and then held by the patient in his right hand. Of
course the application of any cold object would serve to congeal the
blood, and the connection with the heart appears in the direction to
place the stone in the right hand. Monardes states that both Spaniards and Indians used the bloodstone in this way.46
The
Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, a missionary to the Mexican
Indians, shortly after the Spanish Conquest, writes that in 1576 he
cured many natives who
44
Arnobio, " Il tesoro delle gioie," Venice, 1602, p. 21. " Bellucci, "
Il feticismo in Italia," Perugia, 1907, p. 91, note. *" Monardes,
Semplieium medieamentorum ex novo orbe delatorum historia (Latin
version by Clusius), Antverpiae, 1579, p. 51.
