WHEN JEWELS WERE EATEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14525, 12 November 1910, Page 5 (Supplement)

WHEN JEWELS WERE EATEN.

POWDERED PRECIOUS STONES AS MEDICINE. Stores of healing, as they used to be called, may not have been quite such fakes as sceptical moderns think. At least a writer in the Lady's Pictorial inclines to believe that there may have been some foundation for the faith once placed in them. He points out that " every gem is the focus of a light ray, and it is noteworthy that the traditional attributes" of jewels are quite along the line of later scientific ideas. The amethyst and the sapphire, prisms of the soothing violet and blue ray, have ever been considered calming in their influence, while the ruby, the bloodstone, etc., have always been said to exercise the rousing, stimulating effect of the red ray. " Gems are highly electric. The chrysolite acts on the magnetic needle and this presupposes the radiation of living force from jewels, so strongly insisted upon in ancient and mediaeval writings. Precious stones applied externally or . internally formed an accepted part of the medical pharmacopaeia in ancient and mediaeval times." . An ancient and costly jewel compound was "the five precious fragments," consisting of powdered rubies and hyacinths. A famous French confection of 1712 was composed of iacinth, coral, sapphire, topaz, pearl, and emerald mixed with gold and silver leaf and "herbs of power." "This confection," says Pomet, the French King's apothecary, "is much used .in Florence and Languedoc, where you meet few persons not having a pot thereof." It was supposed to be an excellent recipe for many physical ailments. Precious stones were prepared medicinally by (1) powdering (i.e., by grinding); (2) calcination (by fire or corrosion); (3) purification; (4) liquation (5) distillation or volatisation (i.e., dissolved in spirits of wine and distilled) ; (6) sirrupisation (solution mixed with citron, barberries, sugar, and water). rOWDEB OF EMERAXDS in doses of 30 to 40 grains was considered an astringent. It staunched blood and strengthened the eyes. Powdered topaz and rose water prevented bleeding and was good for digestion; it was sold by apothecaries as an antidote to madness, and taken in time cured asthma and induced sleep. Powder of rubies was usually taken in doses of 30 or 40 grains "to strengthen the vitals and restore lost strength !" and also prevented infection. Sapphires are highly electric there was powder of sapphire and oil of sapphire; some "prepare a sapphire . . . with cordial water; others dissolve the fine dust of a saphyire in pure vinegar and juyce of limons, and give the solution with some other cordial. Powder of sapphire healed boils and sores, and was also good for the eyes. Pearls were given in consumption, cured quartan, ague, strengthened the nerves. " Salt of pearl" was much thought of by Paracelsus; pearls ; were sometimes taken in doses of six grains in'water "or dissolved in vinegar, barberry juice or limons." '

Poison was the terror of the Middle Ages; it is natural therefore to find many remedies among gems— jacinth, the sapphire, the diamond, the cornelian, the ruby, the agate, the toadstone, the bezoar stone were all used as antidotes to poison.

The Lee penny was a famous stone of healing, set in a coin brought' back from the Crusades by one of the Lockarts of Lee; it was specially used in cattle diseases. The coin, attached to a chain, was dipped in a bucket of water"three dips and a swirl," as the country people expressed it—and the water was given to the cattle. In • the reign of Charles I. the Laird of Lee lent the penny to the inhabitants of Newcastle, where the plague was raging, receiving as pledge £6000.