Snake Stones and Bezoars Kunz: Magic of Jewels Page 246



	216 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS regarded as having therapeutic virtues, such, for instance, asa" stone ' ' from the body of a doe ; this had been found by a certain Helmhardt Jörger and by him presented to the emperor; another of these treasured concretions came from the stomach of a stag. A specimen of the famed "eagle-stone" is also listed ; this had a double gold setting, and on it were inscribed the words "Piedra Geodas," showing that the real character of this stone as a geode was then well understood.²⁶ Some of the gold-mounted bezoars of Eudolph II are still to be seen in the Hofmuseum, at Vienna. One is surrounded by a gold band with a scroll pattern ; another has a capping of gold and stands upon a golden base, and still another, capped and belted with gold, is attached by a chain to a golden bowl. This was probably to be used as a test of the freedom from poison of any beverage in the vessel. A bezoar of the eighteenth century is mounted upon a tree of gold, against the trunk of which a wild boar is leaning. This may be only a decorative adjunct, or it might be an indication of the particular animal source of this special bezoar.²⁷ The bezoars of Borneo are taken either from monkeys or porcupines. For medicinal use, the gratings are dissolved in water and the solution is administered as required. Skeats relates that he was once asked $200 by a native for a small stone, erroneously asserted to be a bezoar. This stone was carefully wrapped up in cotton and preserved in a tin box with some grains of rice, the owner firmly believing that the stone fed on the rice. A red monkey (semnopithecus) furnishes many of these bezoars, but those from the porcupine are supposed to be so much the more efficacious that the Sultan of Saik claims all bezoars of this kind found in "Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, vol. xx, Pt. II, pp. lxv, xcvii, Wien, 1899. "Figured in Jeweler's Circular Weekly, Dec. 17, 1913, p. 53; Charles A. Brassier, " Gold Mounted Specimens of Bezoar."