Folio 103v - Of stones and what they can do, continued.
and against snakebite; taken with honey it is good for eye trouble; and it softens the stone in the bladder. It comes from Africa, Ethiopia and Arabia.
Asbestos comes from Arcadia. It has a metallic colour. Its nature is that if you once ignite it, it burns forever.
Penantes conceives and gives birth to another stone; for this reason it is good for women who are pregnant or in labour.
Sagda is hard to find. This is how you find it: it sticks to ships and cannot be taken or cut off. It is found in the country of the Chaldeans.
Medus is found among the Turks. It bestows life and death if it is ground on a green grindstone and mixed with a woman's milk. Placed on sightless eyes, it restores their vision. Dissolved in the milk of a ewe that has had no more than one lamb, and that one a male, it takes away gout and cures the kidneys. It should be kept in silver and drunk in the evening and before lunch. If the powder is administered in water, whoever drinks it will vomit up his lungs and die; and if he bathes his eyes with it, he will go blind. Its colour is black.
Gelatia is a stone so hard that it cannot be shattered and so cold that it cannot be warmed.
Exacontalitus has sixty colours within it. It is found in the land of the cave-dwellers.
Dionysia is black in colour, with red marks. Ground in water, it has the flavour of wine; nevertheless, it banishes drunkenness.
Chryselectrum has the colour of gold and amber. If it is given in the morning it brings joy; but it brings anger and sadness if it is not looked at often.
Diadocos is of value to those who cast spells in water, but if it touches a dead man it loses its virtue.
Pyrite does not allow you to grasp it, because if you do so, it burns your hand.
Chelonite is a stone, carried by a certain kind of tortoise in India. It is a mixture of purple and other colours. If you put it in your mouth, well washed, under your tongue, at the waxing of the moon, it gives you the power to see the future; on the first day you can do this up to the sixth hour; when the moon is new, you have the power for the full twenty-four hours, up to the fifteenth day. This stone is unaffected by fire.