Three bezoar stones were sent by the Shah of Persia as a royal gift for his brother the Emperor Napoleon, only a hundred years ago.
Ambrose Paré, who wrote in the later half of the sixteenth century, was one of the few eminent doctors who discredited the alleged medicinal virtue of the bezoards. He was surgeon to Charles IX, and relates that one day, the king being at Clermont, a Spanish nobleman brought him a bezoar stone which he assured him was an antidote against all poisons. The king sent for Paré and asked him if he knew any substance which would annul the effects of any poison. Paré said that could not be, for there were many sorts of poisons which acted in very different ways. The Spanish nobleman, however, maintained that this stone was a universal antidote, and the king was eager to test the question. So the Provost of the Palace was sent for and asked if he had any criminal in his charge condemned to death. He said he had a cook who had stolen two silver dishes, and who was to be hanged the next day. The offer was thereupon made to the cook that he should take a poison, and an alleged antidote immediately afterwards, and if he escaped with his life he should go free. The cook gladly consented, and an apothecary was ordered to prepare a deadly draught and give it, and to follow this with a dose of the bezoar. This was done. The poor wretch lived for about seven hours in terrible agony, which Paré tried in vain to relieve. After his death Paré opened him and showed that the antidote had no effect at all. It was sublimate which had been given. “And the king commanded that the stone should be thrown into the fire; which was done.”
Paré’s authority was considerable, but it was by no means strong enough to destroy public faith in the bezoar. According to Pomet and Lemery the demand for the stones was so great in France more than a century later that it was difficult to get them genuine except at fancy prices. A stone of 4¼ oz. was sold for 2,000 livres (say £75). In Savary’s “Dictionnaire de Commerce” (1741) it is stated that when bezoars arrived at Amsterdam they fetched from 300 to 400 livres apiece. They were bought by rich citizens either to serve as presents, or to be kept in their families.
Gascoyne’s or Gascoign’s Powder.
In the paper by Mr. Slare read before the Royal Society already referred to the author comments with similar severity on the then popular Gascoign’s Powder. As evidence of the fame it possessed he says he had been told that a certain “grandee of the faculty” had got above £50,000 by prescribing this compound. I suppose this meant he had received that amount in fees for prescriptions ordering that medicine. Taking advantage of the reverence in which bezoar was held by that generation, Gascoign’s Powder had assumed as a second title the name of bezoardic powder. It was also known as the Powder of the Black Tops of Crab-claws, from the ingredient in largest quantity. The professed composition of Gascoign’s Powder as given by Mr. Slare was oriental bezoar, white amber, hartshorn in powder, pearls, crabs’ eyes, coral, and black tops of crabs’ claws. Naturally a powder of such costly ingredients was sold at a very high price. Mr. Slare recommends chalk and salt of wormwood as being in all respects as good. The former was cheap enough then; and of the salt he says two pounds could be got for the price of half an ounce of the compound.
Vipers.
Both in ancient and comparatively modern times vipers have been held in the highest esteem for their medicinal virtues, and viper fat, viper broth, and viper wine are used to this day in some remote parts of Britain, and to a still greater extent on the Continent. In some districts of France heads of vipers enclosed in little silk bags are worn by children to preserve them from croup and convulsions.
It was the addition of vipers to the confection of Mithridates that constituted the principal improvement effected by Andromachus in his composition of the electuary which came to be known as theriakon, and subsequently as theriaca. Therion was Greek for a wild beast, but came to mean specially a venomous serpent, and the compound may have been called theriaca either to indicate that vipers were an important ingredient, or that it would cure their bites.
According to Dr. Mead, Antonius Musa, physician to Octavius Cæsar, was one of the first physicians who recommended the flesh of vipers for medicinal use. Pliny states that he quickly cured inveterate ulcers by this remedy. It is possible, however, that Musa acquired his knowledge of this remedy from a Greek physician named Craterus, who had advised that in certain wasting diseases vipers should be eaten, dressed as fish. In Galen’s time vipers had become common medicines, and were probably taken to some extent as a nourishing food.
Moses Charas studied vipers very closely, and wrote a treatise on their use in medicine (1669) which had a great reputation. He adopted the curious view of Van Helmont that the poison of the viper, which was supposed to be contained in the animal’s saliva, was not there normally, but was created as the effect of rage and terror. According to Charas, the head of the viper, grilled and eaten, would cure its bite, or hung to the neck would cure quinsy. The brain similarly hung on the neck of an infant would greatly assist in cutting the teeth. The skin fastened round the right thigh of a woman was an excellent aid to delivery in childbirth; if given to dogs, cooked or raw, it would cure mange. The fat was a valuable application in gout, or for tumours. Those treatments he had verified by his own experience. Other virtues attributed to vipers were mentioned, but he had not proved them, and could not conscientiously guarantee their existence. One was that the person who swallowed the liver of a viper could not be bitten by any kind of serpent during the ensuing six months.