Bezoar stones acquired their fame in the East, and were introduced to European medicine by the Arabs. The name is of Persian origin, Pad-zahr, meaning an expeller of poisons. The earliest reference known to Bezoar stones in Europe is by Avenzoar, an Arab physician who practised in Seville about the year 1000. They were included in the London Pharmacopœias from 1618 to 1746.
There were many kinds of bezoar stones sold. The most esteemed was the lapis bezoar orientale. This came from Persia and was supposed to be obtained from the intestines of the Persian wild goat. It was a calculus which had formed itself by deposits of phosphate of lime round some nucleus, such as hair, or the stone of a fruit. One in the museum of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital has a date stone for nucleus. It was believed that the special virtues of the stone were due to some unknown plant on which the animal fed.
A certain kind of ape also yielded bezoar stones. These were obtained by giving the ape an emetic. There were, besides, the lapis bezoar occidentale, procured from the llamas of Peru; and the bezoar Germanorum got from the chamois of the Swiss mountains. These never commanded the same confidence as those from the East. The latter are stated by Paris and Redwood and other writers to have sold for ten times their weight in gold. No authority, however, is given for that assertion.
In a paper read before the Royal Society of London, in 1714, by Frederick Slare, F.R.C.S., the claims of the bezoar stone to the possession of medical virtues are boldly challenged; and in the course of the paper the author states that the price varied from about £3 to £5 per ounce in London. He mentions that he had asked a London druggist, one “of the upper Size,” how many ounces of bezoar stones he sold yearly. He said about 500 ounces. I presume he was a wholesale druggist. Perhaps this is implied by the expression “of the upper Size.” Mr. Slare uses this fact in support of his suggestion that a large proportion of the imports of these precious commodities, though they came from India or Persia right enough, had never been inside any wild goat, antelope, or ape. He records experiments which go to show this, and also gave letters from medical officers in India, men quite competent to judge, who manifested in this particular a surprising degree of innocence. It would have been strange if the wily oriental had refrained from practising his skill on his confiding Western customers.
Mr. Slare tells us that the stone was only found in about one goat out of seven killed, and that it took some twelve stones to make an ounce, which worked out to nearly 50,000 goats to be slain annually to keep this one London druggist supplied.
The original use of the bezoar was as an antidote to poisons. It came to be the valued remedy for all kinds of fevers, was applied externally in many skin diseases, and had the reputation of being able to cure even leprosy. The dose of the oriental bezoar was from 4 to 16 grains; of the occidental 6 to 30 grains. They were also carried about in gold or silver boxes as amulets. In Portugal in time of plague the stones were let out at about the equivalent of ten shillings a day. Some designed for this use may still be seen in museums. Bezoar stones were required to be of an olive-greenish tint, to be striated, and to yield a musky odour. They were further expected to strike a green colour when rubbed on white paper which had previously been prepared with chalk.
The alchemists prepared a mineral bezoar, by treating butter of antimony with nitric acid. They got antimonious acid. The livers and hearts of vipers dried in the sun furnished the animal bezoar; and a stony concretion sometimes found in cocoa-nuts, and in high repute among the Malays as a medicine was called vegetable bezoar or calatippe.
The importance attached to bezoar stones in the seventeenth century, and, incidentally, their liability to falsification, are illustrated by a minute in the records of the Society of Apothecaries, dated May 25th, 1630, as follows:—
Pretended bezar stones sent by the Lord Mayor to be viewed were found to be false and counterfiet and fitt to be destroyed and the whole table [or as we should say, the Court] certified the same to the Lord Mayor.
A little later, it appears that the case of these stones was tried at the Guildhall, a jury composed partly of druggists and partly of apothecaries being empannelled. This jury confirmed the verdict of the table of apothecaries and the bezoar stones were duly burnt.