206 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
an
antidote to poison, recorded by the famous French surgeon, Ambroise
Paré (1510-1590), was performed in Paris with one which had been
brought from Spain to Charles IX of France. Clearly the only perfectly
satisfactory means of ascertaining whether the reputed virtues of this
curious concretion were really present was to make an experiment
therewith upon a living human being. Now it chanced that just at this
time there was in the royal prison a cook who had stolen two silver
dishes from his master, and who, in accord with the pitiless laws of
that period, had been condemned to death for this offence. Here was an
excellent opportunity, therefore, to make a trial of the bezoar, but as
the adjudged legal penalty could not well be arbitrarily changed to
some other form of death, the matter was first laid before the
condemned man himself, with the promise that should he not succumb to
the poison he would be given his liberty. As at the worst this was
taking a chance of life in exchange for certain death, the cook readily
consented. The necessary preparations having been made, the poison was
administered and immediately thereafter the man was given a dose
composed of a part of the bezoar reduced to powder and dissolved in
liquid. The effects of the poison were soon manifested by violent
retching and purging, and when Paré was called in an hour later, he
found the man in great agony, with blood issuing from his nose, ears
and mouth, and from the other bodily apertures. He piteously complained
that he felt as though consumed by an inward flame, and before another
hour had passed he expired, crying out that it would have been much
better to have died by hanging. From his report, Paré seems not to have
been present when the poison was given and not to have been informed of
its character, as he merely states that from the results of his autopsy
and from the symptoms he had observed, he concluded that it
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