Deserving praise above the rest, whose vertues are unknowne.
THE MARCHANT’S VERDICT
The diamond bright, the Saphire brave, are stones that beare the name,
But flatter not, and tell the troath, Magnes deserves the same.[[120]]
It was reported in the seventeenth century that ruptures were cured in Belgium by the help of the loadstone. The patient was first given a dose of iron filings, reduced to a very fine powder; thereupon a plaster made of crushed loadstone was applied externally to the affected part. This was said to produce a cure in the space of eight days.[[121]] Probably the plaster was believed to draw the iron filings or some emanation from them through the affected parts toward the surface.
In medieval Europe this mineral was greatly valued for its therapeutic virtues. Trotula, the first of the female physicians connected with the celebrated School of Salerno, the centre of medical culture in Europe in the Middle Ages, and who wrote a treatise on female diseases, recommended the use of the loadstone in childbirth. The stone was to be held in the right hand, and the learned lady asserted that the wearing of a coral necklace would aid its beneficent effect. Both these substances are prescribed for this use by the Oxford teacher, John Gadesden (1300), in his “Rosa Anglica.” Francisco Piemontese, who taught in Naples about 1340, also recommends the loadstone, but he directs that it be strewn with the ashes obtained by burning the hoof of an ass or a horse; according to this last authority, the stone should be held in the left hand.[[122]]
That wounds caused by burning could be healed if powdered loadstone were sprinkled over them was confidently taught even in the seventeenth century. However, some ill effects were occasionally remarked when the substance was used medicinally, for it sometimes produced melancholia. In this case an antidote was found in the emerald, and we are assured that if a solution made from this stone were taken thrice a day for nine consecutive days, the melancholia would pass away.[[123]]
In the sixteenth century in India, it was believed that a small quantity of loadstone taken internally preserved the vigor of youth, and Garcias ab Orta relates that a king of Ceylon, when an old man, ordered that cooking utensils of this material should be made for him, and had all his food cooked in these. Garcias claims to have this information direct from a Jew, Isaac of Cairo, who was ordered to make the vessels.[[124]]
A loadstone amulet for the cure of gout is stated to have been worn by a native of the English county of Essex. The stone was sewed up in a flannel covering to which was attached a black ribbon for suspension from the neck. Of course it was worn beneath the clothing, although the encasing flannel must have prevented direct contact with the skin. This piece of magnetic iron ore measured about an inch and a half in width, and was two-tenths of an inch thick. The patient, a Mr. Pelly, was an elderly man, who had suffered for some time from annually recurring attacks of gout which prostrated him for from three to four months. Learning of the reputed virtues of loadstones, more especially of those of Golconda, he sent to India for one and he is said to have been thereby relieved of his disease.[[125]]
