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SNAKE STONES AND BEZOAES 239
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the
serpent,—evidently a worthy descendant of the original serpent of
Paradise, "more subtle than any beast of the field,"—wound its tail
about the bell-rope and pulled the bell. When the judge appeared, as in
duty bound, he was struck by this strange spectacle, and reported it to
the emperor, who told him to right the wrong which had been done,
directing him to expel and Mil the toad. Not long after, the serpent made its way into the palace and entered the emperor's1
room, bearing in its mouth a small stone. Proceeding to the emperor's
couch, it crawled up, raised its head above the emperor's face and
dropped the stone upon his eyes. As soon as the stone touched the eyes,
the emperor's sight was restored. The serpent disappeared and was
never seen again.67
A
representative type of "madstone" is a concretionary calculus
occasionally, but very rarely, found in the gullet of male deer. In
form it bears a resemblance to a water-worn pebble and is usually of
oblong shape, the largest specimens being 3 inches in length and 1%
inches in width. The chemical analysis of Dr. H. C. White showed that
the chief component was tricalcic phosphate. His experiments
demonstrated that while such a concretion would absorb water to the
amount of 5 per cent, of its own weight, the quantity of blood or other
fluid it was able to absorb only amounted to 2.3 per cent, of its
weight. When immersed in water, after having been placed on a wound
caused by the bite of a venomous creature, the liquid absorbed was
given out so as to discolor the water, and the material exuded was
found to be of toxic quality. However, experiments with animals that
had been bitten by snakes or other reptiles, failed to show that the
stone exercised any curative effect. Dr. White states that he has in
his possession a "mad-
" " Die Gesta Romanorum," ed. Wilhelm Dick, Erlangen, 1890, p. 127.
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