Piedra bezar de las Indias — the Andean bezoar stone
Concretions from Andean camelids entered a drug category the Old World already had, and two Seville printings record the transfer. Acosta names the animals, writes the Indians' causal theory down as theirs, then puts a counter-question to them. Monardes prints a section "Delas piedras Bezaares del Peru", a correspondent's dissection with a woodcut, a market where one Oriental stone in ten is genuine — and a four-patient comparison from a German plague hospital.
Why this wins its question: English coverage of the bezoar stone is a curiosity item — Persian goats, royal poison-cups, Ambroise Paré's cook — and the American half of the story is usually missing altogether. Read from the two Seville printings page by page, the Andean bezoar is a documented transfer with all its parts on the record: the camelid species and their grading, an indigenous causal theory written down as indigenous and then probed with a counter-question about Castilian sheep, a dissection performed in Peru and printed in Seville as a woodcut, a market that ranked Peru second to the East Indies, adulteration by both sides of the trade, a two-against-two hospital comparison — and, on the facing leaf, powdered unicorn.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Acosta devotes a chapter to them — "CAP. 42. De las Piedras Bezaares", libro IV of the Seville 1590 printing, folio 296. The stone is found "en el buche y vientre destos animales: vnas vezes vna: y otras dos, y tres, y quatro"; sizes run from smaller than a hazelnut through walnuts, pigeons' eggs and hens' eggs to some he had seen "dela grãdeza de vna narája"; colours black, brown, white, aubergine and gilded, and "no es regla cierta mirar la color, ni tamaño, para juzgar q̃ sea mas fina"; and all of them "se componẽ de diuersas tunicas, o laminas vna sobre otra". The sources named are the province of Xauxa and others of Peru.
Folio 297 names the animals and grades the product. The stones come from "Guanacos, y Pacos, y Vicuñas, y Tarugas", and some add wild goats the Indians call Cypris; those of the guanacos and pacos are smaller and darker "y no se estiman en tanto, ni se tienen por tan aprobadas para medicina"; from the vicuñas come larger stones "y se tienen por mejores"; the most excellent are believed to be the tarugas'. Acosta adds that the stone is found in males and females equally, and that all the animals that carry it ruminate and "ordinariamẽte pastan entre nieues y punas".
The explanation printed for how the stone forms is attributed to indigenous informants as theirs, in the text, and not absorbed into the author's voice. "Refieren los Indios de tradició y enseñança de sus mayores, y antiguos", Acosta writes, that in Xauxa and other provinces of Peru there are many poisonous herbs and animals that envenom the waters and pastures the beasts drink, eat and tread; that among these herbs is one known "por instinto natural de la Vicuña", which those animals eat and by it preserve themselves from the poison, and from that herb they breed the stone in the crop, "y de alli le prouiene toda su virtud cótra ponçoña". He closes the passage "Esta es la opinion, y tradicion de los Indios".
He then tests the theory rather than transmitting it, and prints the objection and the answer. Having noted that the account agrees with reason and with what Pliny reports of wild goats grazing on poison (margin "Pli.lib.10.c.72"), Acosta records: "Preguntados los Indios que pastando como pastan en las mismas punas carneros y ouejas de Castilla, y cabras, y venados, y vacas, como no se halla en ellos la piedra Bezaar? Responden, que no creen ellos, que los dichos animales de Castilla coman aquella yerua, y q̃ en venados, y gamos ellos han hallado tãbien la piedra Bezaar." He adds the datum that in New Spain bezoars are found where there are no vicuñas, pacos, tarugas or guanacos, "sino solamente cieruos".
Acosta's own verdict on efficacy is guarded, and it is the honest anchor of this object. On folio 298 he writes that the stone's principal effect is against poisons and venomous diseases, "y aun q̃ della ay diferentes opiniones, y vnos la tienen por cosa de ayre, otros hazen milagros della: lo cierto es ser de mucha operació aplicada en el tiẽpo, y modo conueniẽte, como las demas yeruas, y agẽtes naturales. Pues no ay medicina tan efficaz, que siẽpre sane." He records that in tabardete it has been admirably approved in Spain and Italy, "en el Piru no tanto" — a regional inconsistency he prints without explaining away.
The same folio prices the American stone within an existing world market and records the fraud that followed. First rank in esteem goes to the bezoars brought from the East Indies, olive-coloured; "el segundo las del Piru: el tercero las de nueua España". And "Despues que se començarõ a preciar estas piedras dizen, que los Indios hã hecho algunas artificiales, y adulteradas" — with the reciprocal error that buyers seeing stones larger than usual take them for false, which Acosta calls a deception, "porque las ay grandes y muy finas, y pequeñas cótrahechas: la prueua, y experiẽcia es el mejor maestro de conocellas".
Monardes gives the American stone its own section — "DELAS PIEDRAS BEZAARES del Peru", folio 90 of the tercera parte of the Seville 1580 printing — and opens it with a claim about the effect of his own book: having already treated the stone in the segunda parte, he returns to it because "el primero descubridor dellas" sent him some of the best that had come from those parts, and did so "de reconocimiento, diziendo que por lo que yo escreui dellas tuuieron noticia y conocimiento dellas, y que el libro q̃ dellas escreui, les fue guia para hallarlas y descubrirlas". The claim is a correspondent's compliment relayed by its beneficiary and is given a lower confidence for that reason, but the section it introduces is not in doubt.
That section prints an anatomical observation made in Peru and posted to Seville, with a woodcut. The correspondent, Monardes writes, "quiso ver como estauan y se criauan enel animal, y assi por sus propias manos hizo anotomia del", and wrote that the bezoar stones are bred "en vn receptaculo a manera de vna faxa, hecha de carne vilosa, de largor de dos palmos, poco mas o menos, y de anchor de tres dedos: la qual esta pegada junto al buche, dela parte dedentro", the stones set in it one behind another "como ojales en vn sayo". Below the sentence the 1580 folio carries a small block showing the row of openings, captioned in the margin "Como estan puestas".
Monardes applies one quality rule to both hemispheres and prints a figure for fraud in the older trade. Of the Oriental stones he writes that "traen tãtas faltas, que entre ciento se hallan diez verdaderas, y sus escriptores dela India lo confiessan, que hazen alla muchas falsas". The genuine ones come from animals of the mountains of Persia, not from the goats of the plains of Malacca that serve as meat and do not feed on the salutiferous mountain herbs; "lo mismo es en nuestras Indias Occidẽtales, que las que se crian en las sierras del Peru, estas tienẽ las piedras finas verdaderas", while those of the plains "son sin prouecho".
He states an evidentiary standard for the section, on folio 91, and it is narrower than the material available to him: to set down all the effects and diseases these Peruvian stones had cured, as reported by those coming from there and by his correspondent, "era menester hazer vn gran libro dello: solo pondre lo que yo he experimentado y los efetos que he entendido que hazen, y los que han passado por mis manos, para que se les pueda dar entero credito, y como à cosa que lo tiene tal, pues ay dello la experiencia, con toda seguridad y confiança se puedan vsar."
His treatise on the bezoar contains a controlled comparison, and its limits matter as much as its existence. Reporting a great plague in Germany, Monardes writes: "Haziendo experiencia della, auiendo enel Hospital quatro heridos de aqueste mal, se la dierõ a los dos dellos, y à los otros no: los que la tomaron escaparon, los otros dos murieron", with many grandees and lords present as witnesses. This is four patients, in a German hospital, reported at second hand by a physician in Seville, and it concerns the bezoar generally rather than the Peruvian stone. It is recorded here as evidence of a way of arguing, not as evidence that the remedy worked.
The cost of taking that comparison for more than it is stands on the facing pages of the same treatise. Monardes reports that the Emperor took the stone often for sadness and melancholy; recommends Bolo Armenico prepared with rose water as a substitute "en falta dela piedra Bezaar, porque esta excede a todo"; and describes curing a leading gentleman of Seville of a malignant fever by giving him the bezoar "con vn poco de Vnicornio". A physician setting out a two-against-two comparison and a physician prescribing powdered unicorn are the same physician, in the same book, within eight leaves.
What the two printings establish is the practice, the market and the argument, not the pharmacology. Between them they show an Andean product identified, graded, shipped, dissected, priced below the Oriental stone, counterfeited, and defended with a four-patient story — and they show two Spanish authors qualifying it, one recording that some hold it "cosa de ayre" and that no medicine always heals, the other confining himself to what passed through his own hands. No source cited in this object establishes that the bezoar had any antidotal effect, and none is asserted.