Bezoir stone holder

In J.K. Rowling’s novel Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a quick-thinking Harry saves his best friend’s life by making him swallow a bezoar stone—a calcification from the stomach of a goat or other ruminant. Harry believed, as did many Renaissance doctors, that the stone served as a universal antidote to poison.

The Huntington’s collection of Renaissance printed books document the strange stone’s far-ranging use by apothecaries, medical practitioners, noble and royal collectors, preachers, and poets. In addition to nullifying the effects of poison, the fabulous stone reputedly cured worms, dispelled melancholy, and preserved youth.

The efficacy of the bezoar stone was put to the test in 1567, when Ambroise Paré, physician to King Charles IX of France, proposed a medical trial of sorts. He convinced a prisoner facing hanging to swallow poison along with the bezoar. If he survived, he’d be pardoned. The prisoner agreed and then died hours later, bleeding from every orifice and vomiting profusely, crying that death by gallows would have been better.

Yet the library record is packed with fantastic examples of the stone’s virtues and its soaring market value—equal to gold—that continued unabated long after Paré’s experiment.