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Snake Stones and Bezoars: Redi

Francisco Redi describes the extraordinary healing power attributed to stones obtained from the heads of certain serpents, called by the Portuguese "cobras de capello," found throughout Hindostan and Farther India. These stones are claimed to be an infallible remedy for the bites and stings of all kinds of venomous reptiles or animals, and likewise for wounds made by poisoned arrows, etc. He repeats the usual tales of their adhering powerfully when applied to the bite or wound, and clinging to it like a cupping-glass until they had absorbed all the poison, when they would fall off spontaneously, leaving the man or animal sound and free. Then follows the account of steeping the stones in milk to remove the poison, the milk assuming a color between yellow and green. These wonderful stones and the narrations concerning them had been brought to Italy by Catholic missionaries, who seemed to have entire faith in their powers; so that Redi says they offered to prove the accounts by any number of experiments, such as would satisfy the most incredulous, and prove to medical men that Galen was correct when he wrote (Chapter XIV, Book I) that certain medicines attract poison as the magnet does iron. For this purpose a search for vipers, etc., was recommended; but, owing to the season being later and colder than usual, none could at that time be obtained, as they had not emerged from their winter quarters. An experiment was therefore substituted, after much consultation among the learned men of the Academy of Pisa, whereby oil of tobacco was introduced into the leg of a rooster. This was regarded as one of the most fatal of such substances, and was administered by impregnating a thread with it to the width of four fingers and drawing it through the punctured wound. One of the monks forthwith applied the stone, which behaved in the regular manner described. The bird did not recover, but it survived eight hours, to the admiration of the monks and other spectators of the experiment.

Redi states that he himself possessed some of these stones, as did also Vincent Sandrinus, one of the most learned herbalists of Pisa. Redi describes them as "always lenticular in form, varying somewhat in size, but in general about as large as a farthing, more or less. In color some are black, others white, others black, with an ashy hue on one side or both," etc. Up to the present time no one has apparently identified what Tavernier referred to in speaking of snake-stones. It, however, occurred to the writer, after receiving a quantity of tabasheer from Dr. F. H. Mallet of the Geological Survey of India, who obtained it at the bazaar of the Calcutta Fair in November of 1888, that many, if not most of the Hindu snake-stones must have been tabasheer. Tabasheer is a variety of opal that is found in the joints of certain species of bamboo in Hindostan, Burmah, and South America; it is originally a juice, which by evaporation changes into a mucilaginous state, then becomes a solid substance. It ranges from translucent to opaque in color, and is either white or bluish-white by reflected light, and pale yellow or slight sherry red by transmitted light. Upon fracture it breaks into irregular pieces like starch. As in Tavernier's account of its clinging to the palate and causing water to boil when immersed, it actually has the property of strongly adhering to the tongue, and when put into water emits rapid streams of minute bubbles of air. It has a strong siliceous odor, but after absorbing an equal bulk of water becomes transparent like a Colorado hydrophane described by the writer several years ago before the New York Academy of Sciences.