applied
to the bitten spot, and it would adhere to the inflamed surface for
eight days ; at the expiration of this time it would fall off. The bite
would be entirely healed and would not be followed by ill effects of
any kind.81
A
novel theory in regard to the formation of a type of snake-stones is
given by an old Chinese writer. This is that snakes, before they begin
to hibernate, swallow some yellow earth and retain this in the gullet
until they come forth again in the springtime, when they cast it forth.
By this time the earth has acquired the consistency of a stone, the
surface remaining yellow, while the interior is black. If picked up
during the second phase of the moon this concretion was thought to be a
cure for children's convulsions, and for gravel, and was powdered and
given in infusion. The infusion could also be applied with advantage
externally to envenomed swellings.52
An
old manuscript found in a manor house in Essex, England, contains a
translation, made in 1732 by an Oxford student, E. Swinton, of some
details on the snake-stone, taken from a work published in the same
year at Bologna by Nicolo Campitelli. After noting that these stones
came from the province of Kwang-shi in China and from different places
in India, their appearance and qualities are described. In color they
were almost black, some having pale gray or ash-color spots. The test
of the genuineness of such a stone was to apply it to the lips ; if not
a spurious one, it would cling so closely to the membrane that
considerable force must be exerted to separate it therefrom. The usual
directions are given for its employment in the cure of snake bites,
but its usefulness by no means ended here; its curative power was also
exhibited in the case of "Scrophulous Erup-
"
Arakel, '* Livre d'histoire," chap, lui ; in Collection d'historiens
arméniens, French transi, by M. Brosset, St. Petersburg, 1874, vol. i,
p. 545.
** F. de Mély, " Les lapidaires de l'antiquité et du moyen age," vol. i, " Lee lapidaires chinois," Paris, 1896, pp. 237-238.
