154 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
cause
it was believed to preserve the wearer from attacks of dizziness. Other
remedial or physical effects of rock-crystal are also noted. Taken as a
powder in dry wine, it was a cure for dysentery, and the physician,
Christopher Barzizius, taught that if its powder were mixed with honey
and administered to mothers, they would be the better able to nurse
their offspring.88
The
following lines by Robert Wilson (d. 1600), a popular
sixteenth-century comedy writer, credit amber and rock-crystal with
qualities not commonly ascribed to them, although the fancied growth of
rock-crystal from a piece of ice probably explains its supposed styptic
virtue :89
Lucre : And if they demand wherefore your
wares and merchandise agree, You must say, jet will take up a straw;
amber will make one fat; Coral will look pale when you be sick,
and crystal stanch blood.
That
a remedial tincture of rock-crystal could be made was firmly believed
by the Danish chemist, Ole Borch (Olaus Borrichius, 1626-1690), and in
his chemical lectures he gives the following directions as to the
processes to be employed. A rock-crystal was to be heated to a high
temperature and then cast, while still warm, into cold water ; it would
thereupon break up into small fragments. By heating these particles
together with tartaric salts, the whole mass would be reduced to a
liquid solution. Half of the quantity, after cooling off, was to be put
into a distilling glass with the best "spirit of wine" and was to be
digested in a bath of lukewarm water. It would then be seen that the
solution became
"Andre«
Bacìi, "De gemmis et lapidibus pretiosis" (Latin translation by
Wolfgang Gabelchover of Italian original), Francofurti, 1603, p. 103.
"*
Wilson, " The Three Ladies of London," 1584. The three female
characters are symbolical or allegorical and are named respectively,
Lucre, Love, and Conscience.
