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SNAKE STONES AND BEZOARS 233
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not
emerged from their winter quarters. An experiment was therefore
substituted, after much consultation among the learned men of the
Academy of Pisa, whereby oil of tobacco was introduced into the leg of
a rooster. This was regarded as one of the most fatal of such
substances, and was administered by impregnating a thread with it to
the width of four fingers and drawing it through the punctured wound.
One of the monks forthwith applied the stone, which behaved in the
regular manner described. The bird did not recover, but it survived
eight hours, to the admiration of the monks and other spectators of the
experiment.
Eedi
states that he himself possessed some of these stones, as did also
Vincent Sandrinus, one of the most learned herbalists of Pisa. Eedi
describes them as ' ' always lenticular in form, varying somewhat in
size, but in general about as large as a farthing, more or less. In
color some are black, others white, others black, with an ashy hue on
one side or both," etc.
Up
to the present time no one has apparently identified what Tavernier
referred to in speaking of snake-stones. It, however, occurred to the
writer, after receiving a quantity of tabasheer from Dr. F. H. Mallet
of the Geological Survey of India, who obtained it at the bazaar of the
Calcutta Fair in November of 1888, that many, if not most of the Hindu
snake-stones must have been tabasheer. Tabasheer is a variety of opal
that is found in the joints of certain species of bamboo in Hindustan,
Burmah, and South America; it is originally a juice, which by
evaporation changes into a mucilaginous state, then becomes a solid
substance. It ranges from translucent to opaque in color, and is either
white or bluish-white by reflected light, and pale yellow or slight
sherry red by transmitted light. Upon fracture it breaks into irregular
pieces like starch. As in Tavernier's account of its clinging to the
palate and causing
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