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The Therapeutic Use of Precious Stones: Helmont

The proper method of applying a sapphire to cure plague boils is given at some length by Von Helmont. A gem of a fine, deep color was to be selected and rubbed gently and slowly around the pestilential tumor. During and immediately after this operation, the patient would feel but little alleviation; but a good while after the removal of the stone, favorable symptoms would appear, provided the malady were not too far advanced. This Von Helmont attributes to a magnetic force in the sapphire by means of which the absent gem continued to extract "the pestilential virulency and contagious poyson from the infected part." (A Ternary of Paradoxes, written originally by Joh. Bapt. Van Helmont and translated, illustrated, and amplicated by Walter Charleton," London, 1650, p. 17.) 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. (S. Hildegardae, "Opera omnia," in Pat. Lat. ed. by J. P. Migne, vol. exevii, Parisiis, 1855, col. 1255.) 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. (Arnobio, "Il tesoro delle gioie," Venice 602, p. 21.) Bloodstone A historical instance of the use of the bloodstone to check a hemorrhage is recorded in the case of Giorgio Vasari (1514-1578), the author of the lives of the Italian painters of the Renaissance period. On a certain occasion, when the painter Luca Signorelli (1439-1521) was placing one of his pictures in a church at Arezzo, Vasari, who was present, was seized with a violent hemorrhage and fainted away. Without a moment's hesitation, Signorelli took from his pocket a bloodstone amulet and slipped it down between Vasari's Shoulder-blades. The hemorrhage is said to have ceased immediately. (Bellucci, "Il feticismo in Italia," Perugia, 1907, p. 91, note.) The bloodstone was used as a remedy by the Indians of New Spain, and Monardes notes that they often cut the material into the shape of hearts. This seems a very appropriate form for an object used to check hemorrhages. The best effect was attained when the stone was first dipped in cold water and then held by the patient in his right hand. Of course the application of any cold object would serve to congeal the blood, and the connection with the heart appears in the direction to place the stone in the right hand. Monardes states that both Spaniards and Indians used the bloodstone in this way. (Monardes, Semplicium medicamentorum ex novo orbe delatorum historia (Latin version by Clusius), Antverpiae, 1579, p. 51.) The Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, a missionary to the Mexican Indians, shortly after the Spanish Conquest, writes that in 1576 he cured many natives who were at the point of death from hemorrhage, a result of the plague, by causing them to hold in the hand a piece of bloodstone. By this means he claims to have saved many lives. (Sahagun, "Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana, vol. iii. Mexico, 1830, pp. 300, 301; lib. xi, cap. viii.) Robert Boyle, in his "Essay about the Origin and Virtues of Gems" (London, 1672, pp. 177-78), tells of a gentleman of his acquaintance who was "of a complexion extraordinary sanguin," and was much afflicted with bleeding of the nose. A gentlewoman sent to him a bloodstone, directing him to wear it suspended from his neck, and from the time he put it on he was no longer troubled with his malady. It recurred, however, if he removed the stone. When Boyle objected that this might be a result of imagination, his friend disposed of his objection by relating the instance of a woman to whom the stone had been applied when she was unconscious from loss of blood. Nevertheless, as soon as it touched her, the flow of blood was checked. Boyle states that this stone did not seem to him to resemble a true bloodstone. It may have been that the cold of the stone congealed the blood, or that the flow was checked by exhaustion.