The bezoar stone, the supposed antidote of European courts

The bezoar stone is not a mineral but a concretion that forms in the stomach of certain ruminants, such as the wild goats of Persia or the llamas of the Andes. Its name comes from the Persian pad-zahr, meaning counter-poison. For centuries it was considered one of the most precious remedies against poison, so much so that it was set in gold and kept in the collections of rulers. Its history is also that of one of the first experimental doubts about its effectiveness.

From Arab medicine to the Kunstkammern

The bezoar entered European medicine through the Arab authors of the Middle Ages, who described it as a universal antidote. In Latin treatises translated from Arabic the stone appeared alongside gems and rare substances, and its fame grew above all in the sixteenth century, when Portuguese and Spanish trade made both eastern bezoars and those from the Americas more accessible.

European courts competed for the best specimens. In the Kunstkammern of the Habsburgs and other princes, bezoars were set in finely worked gold mounts or fitted into drinking cups, in the belief that contact with the stone would neutralise poison. In an age when fear of poisoning accompanied political life, their value could exceed that of many gems.

Ambroise Paré's experiment

The most famous episode involving the bezoar dates from the reign of Charles IX of France. The surgeon Ambroise Paré, sceptical of the stone's virtues, proposed putting it to the test. A palace cook sentenced to death for theft agreed to take a poison and then the bezoar, in exchange for his freedom if he survived. He died in great suffering after a few hours, and Paré reported the episode in his works as proof that the remedy did not work.

The story is often remembered as one of the first examples of an experimental test of a traditional remedy, even though it was carried out by methods we would now consider unacceptable. Paré did not challenge tradition with theoretical arguments but with the observation of a concrete case, which explains the episode's lasting fame. It was not enough, however, to destroy faith in the bezoar, which continued to appear in European pharmacopoeias long after Paré's death.

The Goa stones

Demand was such that artificial bezoars also appeared. In the seventeenth century in Goa, in India, within Jesuit circles, the so-called Goa stones were made: pastes moulded into spheres and sometimes gilded, sold as an alternative to natural bezoars. They were kept in pierced gold or silver containers, some of which are now displayed in European museums and bear witness to the high value placed on these objects.

The bezoar stone holds a special place in the history of amulets: it was talisman, medicine and collector's item at once. Its virtues, never demonstrated, rested on an authoritative tradition and on the prestige of the courts that kept it. Paré's experiment reminds us, however, that already in the Renaissance some felt the need to distinguish between a remedy's reputation and its real effectiveness.