A Historical Description of Snake Stones

Jean Baptiste Tavernier, the great Oriental traveller of the seventeenth century, gives the following description of the "snake-stones" found in India:

Finally, I will mention the snake-stone, which is about the size of a doubloon, some approximating to an oval form, being thicker in the middle and tapering toward the edges. The Indians say that it forms on the head of certain snakes, but I rather believe that the priests of these idolators make them think this, and that this stone is a composition of certain drugs. However this may be, it has great virtue to draw out all the poison, when anyone has been bitten by a venomous creature. If the part that has been bitten has not been punctured, an incision must be made, so that the blood can flow out, and when the stone has been applied, it does not fall off until it has absorbed all the poison which gathers about it. To clean it, woman's milk is used, or should this be lacking, cow's milk, and after ten or twelve hours steeping, the milk which has drawn out all the poison takes on the color of pus. Having dined one day with the Archbishop of Goa, he took me into his museum, where he had several curious objects. Among other things he showed me one of these stones, and having told me of its properties, he assured me that but three days before he had seen them tested, and presented the stone to me. As he was traversing a marsh on the Island of Salsate, whereon Goa is situated, to go to a country house, one of those who bore his palanquin, and who was almost entirely naked, was bitten by a snake and was immediately cured by this stone. I have bought several of them, and they are sold only by the brahmins, which makes me think the brahmins themselves make the stones. There are two methods of testing whether the stone is good or the product of some deeption. The first of these tests is to place it in one's mouth, for then, if it be good, it springs up and cleaves to the palate; the second test is to place it in a glass full of water; if it is not sophisticated, the water begins to seethe, small bubbles rising from the stone at the bottom to the surface of the water.

Thevenot, a French traveller who visited India in 1666, about the time Tavernier was there, asserts that the famous "Stones of the Cobra" were manufactured in the town of Diu, in Guzerat, and that they were made "of the ashes of burnt roots, mingled with a kind of Earth they have, and were again burnt with that Earth, which afterwards is made up into a Paste, of which these Stones are formed." After describing the process employed for cleaning the stones after they had been used, Thevenot adds that if not freed from the absorbed venom the stones would burst.