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Ch. 5: Snake Stones and Bezoars

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204          THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
also remarked that the solution of the stone blackened the teeth and those who used it were therefore obliged to take great care that the medicine should not touch their teeth.
We learn that a genuine stone was valued at 50 gold crowns (about $125) in Calcutta; another is said to have brought 130 crowns ($325). De Boot states that a drachm of the powdered stone was worth two ducats ($5) in Lower
Germany and four ($10) in Upper Germany; why, he does not say.
Garcias ab Horto, a Portu­guese physician of Goa, in India, describes a variety of the bezoar called the Lapis Malacensis, used as an anti­dote for poisons in Malacca. This was found in the liver of the hedgehog, and the sub­stance was held in such es­teem that of two found in the fifteenth century, one was sent as a very valuable gift to the Portuguese Viceroy at Goa. Garcias describes this as being of a light purple hue, bitter to the taste and smooth as the skin of a toad. The custom was to steep the stone in water for some time and then to give this water to the patient as a medicinal draught. A specimen was brought to Rome from Portugal by Cardinal Alexandrinus, and Mercato states that he had seen a test of its virtues as an antidote for poisons. In the opinion of De Boot: "As an antidote for any poison which may have been administered, nothing more excellent than the bezoar stone can be had. "6 It
•"De lapidibus," Lug. Bat., 1636, p. 370. See also Mercati, " Metallc-theca Vaticana," Romae, 1719, p. 179, with figure of stone from, hedgehog.
Ch. 5: Snake Stones and Bezoars Page of 485 Ch. 5: Snake Stones and Bezoars
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