Accession Number

1986.008.0605b

Description

A bezoar stone is a calcareous deposit found in the gastrointestinal tracts of ruminants (cows, sheep, goats, deer) or camelids (camels, llamas, alpacas). The bezoars form when layers of calcium and magnesium phosphate cover indigestible plant material, hair, or even a pebble lodged in the gut. As early as the eighth century, Arabic doctors used bezoars to treat ailments. By the sixteenth century bezoars were used in western medicine as an antidote to poison, and they became highly valued. Multiple bezoars were found in a silver canister on the wreck of the 1622 galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha. They are almost certainly from South American llamas or alpacas. This “triple” bezoar is 4.8 centimeters long and weighs 14.81 grams. One of nine bezoar stones with same accession number. See also 1986.008.0605a, c--h.

Exhibition Label

Case/Object Caption (2023):

Drinking Vessel (Bernegal)
Gold (Peru, c.1600)
Gift of Jamestown Inc.
1986.008.0008

Most bernegals were worked in silver but, in the opulent world of Spanish Peru, they were made of gold, which was in plentiful supply. Although depicted in contemporary paintings, this bernegal is a unique survivor of this style, having spent 400 years hidden below the ocean.

The interior rim holds settings for numerous precious stones, now lost to the sea. Deep in the bowl of the cup is a basket, designed to hold a bezoar stone. Bezoars have the remarkable property of neutralizing arsenic, a poison often used at the time. It was not uncommon for the heirs or rivals of a powerful aristocrat to remove him or her using poison. As a result, many wealthy people carried bezoar pendants, or wore them set in rings, or embedded them in a wine cup like this one.

Bezoar Stones
Calcareous deposits possibly from the digestive tracts of llamas, c.1600
Gift of Jamestown Inc.
1986.008.0605b-e
Previous Exhibition Label (2023):

Bezoar stones were believed to be a universal antidote to poisons. In fact the word is derived from the Persian ​pad-zahr, which means "antidote". Modern research reveals the bezoar stone, made up of hair and calcium, contains a protein that bonds with arsenate proving that the stones would effectively protect the drinker from arsenic poisonings, which was the most common poison used in European courts. These stones were rare and expensive items worth more than ten times their weight in gold.