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The Indians and Spaniards in South America made remedial use of a stone said to be obtained from the cayman or alligator, at Nombre de Dios, Cartagena, etc. This was employed as a cure for various intermittent fevers. Monardes writes that he applied two of these lapides caymanum to the temples of a young girl suffering from an attack of fever, and found that the fever was alleviated thereby; but he doubts that fevers could be entirely cured by this treatment.
From New Spain was also brought the lapis manati, taken from the manatee, or sea-cow. This does not appear to have been a stone, but rather the cochleae of the animal, the small bones in the head which transmit the auditory vibrations to the sensorium. They were highly valued by the Indians for their remedial action in cramps and colic, and the Spaniards collected them and brought them to Spain to enrich their very miscellaneous pharmacopoeia. Sometimes they were taken internally, but often they were set in rings or worn suspended from the neck as amulets. This stone, or bone, is described as oval in shape and of a hue resembling that of ivory. When pulverized and dissolved, the solution was odorless and tasteless. They are in size often as large as a woman's clinched fist.
The ear-bones of fish, almost invariably in paris, are still used as amulets in Spain and Italy. One of their chief virtues is to protect children from the Evil Eye, as well as from accidents of any kind. They are also believed to preserve the wearer from deafness or diseases of the ear. This is quite in accord with the primitive fancy that the different parts of the animal body had prophylactic or curative powers in relation to any disease of that portion of the human body. |
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Precious Stones Guide Vol 8
>> Superstitions About Alligator Stones
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