WHEN JEWELS WERE EATEN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 561, 23 April 1913, Page 7

WHEN JEWELS WERE EATEN.

Stones of healing, as they used to be called, may not have been quite such "fakes" as sceptical moderns think. At least, an "unsoeptical" modern writer inclines to believe; that there has been some foundation for the faith once placed in them. He points out that every gem is the focus of a light ray, and it is noteworthy that the traditional attributes of jewels are quite along the line of later scientific ideas. The amethyst and # the 'sapphire, prisms of the soothing violet and blue rav, have ever been considered calming In their influence; while the ruby, the bloodstone, and others have always been said to exercise the rousing, stimulating effect of the red ray.

Gems are highly electric. The • ehrysalite acts on the magnetic needle, and this presupposes the radiation of living force from jewels, so strongly insisted upon in ancient and mediaeval writings. Precious stones applied externally or internally formed an accepted part of the medical pharmacopoeia in ancient and mediaeval times.

An ancient and costly jewel compound was "the five precious fragments," consisting of powdered rubies,, topazes, emeralds, sapphires, and hyacinths. A famous French confection of "1712 was composed of jacinth, coral, sapphire, topaz, pearl, and emerald, mixed with gold and silver leaf, and "herbs of power." "This confection," says Pomet, the French King's apothecary, "is much used in Florence and Languedoc, where you' meet few persons not having a pot thereof." It was supposed to be an excellent recipe for many physical ailments. Precious stones were prepared medicinally by (1) powdering (by grinding); (2) calcination jby fire or corrosion); (3) purification; (4) liquation; (5) distillation or volatilization (dissolved in spirits of wine and distilled); (6) sirupisation (solution mixed with citron, barberries, sugar, and water). Poison was the terror of the Middle Ages; it is natural, therefore, to find many remedies among gems—the jacinth, the sapphire, the diamond, the cornelian, the ruby, the agate, the toadstone, the bezoar stone, were all used as antidotes to poison. § The Lee penny was a famous stone of healing, set in a coin brought back from the Crusades by one of the Lockharts or Lee; it was specially used in cattle diseases. The coin, attached to a chain, was dipped in a bucket of water —"three dips and a swirl," as the country people expressed it and the water was given to the cattle. In the reign of Charles I. the Laird of Lee lent the penny f> the inhabitants of Newcastle, ■ where the plague was raging, receiving as pledge