"Because wine and other drinks were often laced with arsenic, the most popular poison of the period [seventeenth-century European society], many magical devices were employed to negate its deleterious effects before it was consumed. Amethyst, crushed emerald and "unicorn horn" (often narwhal tusk) were all immersed in suspect beverages in the belief that they would render them safe. The most common and effective of these amulets was the bezoar stone. Bezoars are the gall stones of calcium and hair found in the alimentary tracts of ruminants such as deer, sheep, llamas and antelope. The original bezoars came from goats found in the mountains of Western Persia. They were introduced to Europe from the Middle East sometime in the 11th century, and they remained popular there until the 18th century...
Modern examinations of the properties of bezoars by Gustaf Arrhenius and Andrew A. Benson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have shown that they could, when immersed in an arsenic-laced solution, remove the poison. The toxic compounds in arsenic are arsenate and arsenite. Each is acted upon differently, but effectively, by bezoar stones. Arsenate is removed by being exchanged for phosphate in the mineral brushite, a crystalline structure found in the stones. Arsenite is found to bond to sulfur compounds in the protein of degraded hair, which is a key component in bezoars."
source: "Bezoar Stones" by Corey Malcom, Director of Archaeology
Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society (June 1998)</color>
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