The Curious Lore of Precious Stones / Being a description of their sentiments and folk lore, superstitions, symbolism, mysticism, use in medicine, protection, prevention, religion, and divination. Crystal gazing, birth-stones, lucky stones and talismans, astral, zodiacal, and planetary

by George Frederick Kunz

Topaz

The use of a topaz to cure dimness of vision is strongly recommended by St. Hildegard. To attain the desired end the stone was to be placed in wine and left there for three days and three nights. When retiring to sleep, the patient should rub his eyes with the moistened topaz, so that this moisture lightly touched the eyeball. After the stone had been removed, the wine could be used for five days.[506]

A Roman physician of the fifteenth century was reputed to have wrought many wonderful cures of those stricken by the plague, through touching the plague sores with a topaz which had belonged to two popes, Clement VI and Gregory II. The fact that this particular topaz had been in the hands of two supreme pontiffs must have added much to the faith reposed in the curative powers of the stone by those upon whom it was used, and this faith may really have helped to hasten their recovery.[507]