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Bezoar stones acquired their fame in the East, and were introduced to European medicine by the Arabs. The name is of Persian origin, Pad-zahr, meaning an expeller of poisons. The earliest reference known to Bezoar stones in Europe is by Avenzoar, an Arab physician who practised in Seville about the year 1000. They were included in the London Pharmacopœias from 1618 to 1746.

There were many kinds of bezoar stones sold. The most esteemed was the lapis bezoar orientale. This came from Persia and was supposed to be obtained from the intestines of the Persian wild goat. It was a calculus which had formed itself by deposits of phosphate of lime round some nucleus, such as hair, or the stone of a fruit. One in the museum of St. Bartholomew's Hospital has a date stone for nucleus. It was believed that the special virtues of the stone were due to some unknown plant on which the animal fed.

A certain kind of ape also yielded bezoar stones. These were obtained by giving the ape an emetic. There were, besides, the lapis bezoar occidentale, procured from the llamas of Peru; and the bezoar Germanorum got from the chamois of the Swiss mountains. These never commanded the same confidence as those from the East. The latter are stated by Paris and Redwood and other writers to have sold for ten times their weight in gold. No authority, however, is given for that assertion.

In a paper read before the Royal Society of London, in 1714, by Frederick Slare, F.R.C.S., the claims of the bezoar stone to the possession of medical virtues are