IS THE BEZOAR A REAL ANTIDOTE?

There are plenty of muggle drinks that can render the supper senseless. Absinthe has been known to induce hallucinating effects, Bruichladdich is an incredibly pure and potent whiskey, and Spirytus Rektyfikowany is a Polish vodka that makes you meet your God when you overindulge. But the tipple that almost did in Ron Weasley was a plain old oak-matured mead. Poisoned. It was Ron’s glass that hit the floor first. Ron followed. He crumpled to his knees, tumbled onto a rug, spasmed spookily, and as foam oozed out of his mouth, his skin turned blue.

Harry to the rescue. Looking about and leaping up, Harry hurriedly stripped the walls of its potions. A box fell forward and out spilled a scattering of stones, each no bigger than a bird’s egg. Harry took one of the dry and shriveled stones, opened Ron’s jaw, and thrust it into his throat. At once, Ron stopped moving. But soon, a great hiccupping cough, and Ron was back. Breathing. The quick-thinking Harry had used a bezoar.

The bezoar is an undigested clump of matter, taken from the gut of a goat. Such clumps accumulate inside digestive systems, and are usually made of hair, fibrous plants, and are similar to a cat hairball. In the magic world, bezoars act as antidotes to most poisons, with Basilisk venom being an important exception. But, as bezoars are also real-life objects, what exactly are they, and what can they actually do?

Bezoars

Bezoars were believed for many centuries to be the most marvelous medicine. The word bezoar (pronounced bē zōr) is thought to derive from the Persian pâdzahr, which literally means antidote, or counterpoison. Now, there are over two million species of animals on Earth, but only 148 species are suitable for farming. Of those 148, only 14 have ever been successfully farmed: goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, Bactrian camels, Arabian camels, water buffalo, llamas, reindeer, yaks, mithuns, and Bali cattle. Just 14 large animals in over 10,000 years of farming.

Of these 14, the 4 big livestock animals—cows, pigs, sheep and goats—were all native to what we now know as the Middle East. The area that was home to the best-irrigated crops in the world was also home to the best-watered animals. Little wonder that this area became known as the Fertile Crescent, and little wonder that this area is also the home to the discovery of the bezoar.

Science took a huge leap forward in medieval Islam between the 8th and 14th centuries. Its legacy is still with us in the forms of algebra, algorithm, and alkali. All are Arabic in origin and sit at the very heart of contemporary science. During these centuries, Islam was a diverse, outward-looking culture. The people were charmed by knowledge and quite fascinated by questions of science. The astronomer and mathematician Al-Biruni assessed the size of the Earth to within a few hundred miles. The physicist Ibn al-Haytham helped found the science of optics. And Islamic scholars, obsessed with precise measurement in fields such as astronomy, had a great impact on the scientific revolution that took place in 16th and 17th century Europe and helped shape the work of people like Copernicus.

As far back as the 7th century, the Islamic world used bezoars. They were usually hailed from goats, but also from the guts of deer, camels, cows, and other ruminants. Before being administered, the bezoar would be pummeled and ground into a powder, and either gulped down, or taken with hot water in the form of a more civilized tea. The belief in the benefits of the bezoar was so great that it was also made into a bandage or poultice. In this form, it could be taken externally as a remedy for fever, epilepsy, or even leprosy.

While Islam blossomed, Europe was going through its Dark Ages. In the 14th century, between 25 percent and 60 percent of the European population, an estimated 50 million souls, are thought to have perished in the Black Death, the bubonic plague that swept through Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. The idea of the bezoar, a potent and powerful medicine, must have appealed greatly to the suffering Europeans. Indeed, King Edward IV of England is said to have attributed his recovery from a pustulent wound to his doctor’s use of a bezoar. The celebrated Islamic physician, Avenzoar, is said to have been the first to write for Europeans on the bezoar.

As news of its healing properties spread, bezoars became more commonplace on the continent. However, medical research does not seem to have been Napoleon’s forte. When the Emperor of Persia gave several bezoars to the Frenchman, the story goes he tossed them away before his death, which could have been down to poisoning!

Bezoars as Gems

Napoleon aside, the fame and fortune of bezoars skyrocketed. They soon appeared among lists of gems. A price list drawn up by a Germanic apothecary in 1757 offered sapphires and emeralds, rubies and other precious gems, some of which were for medical means, but the real pick of the precious list was the bezoar. Its listed value placed its price a clear fifty times the estimate for emeralds.

Bezoars would be worn as amulets, and as amulets were meant to contain within them some quality or power to protect their owner from harm, bezoars were a perfect fit. They would be worn around the neck or carried in boxes jeweled to the hilt. Queen Elizabeth I of England, whose eponymous reign and era is associated with the likes of Shakespeare and Marlowe, had several bezoars set in rings. They later became part of the crown jewels of the realm.

A cottage industry sprang up in bogus bezoars. An English goldsmith was summoned to the courts for allegedly peddling worthless fakes in the early 17th century. Hardly surprising, as the asking price of one of the fakes was a cool 100 pounds, worth around $40,000 today. Around a hundred years later, in 1714, bezoar issues were raised by a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Local drug suppliers alleged they had five hundred ounces of bezoar in store. The surgeon had begun to smell a rat when he calculated that such a stock of bezoars would necessitate the slaughter of around fifty thousand goats.

As to the efficacy of the bezoar as an antidote, consider this tale. King Charles IX was gifted a bezoar. Seeming as skeptical as his countryman Napoleon, the king called up his royal physician, Ambroise Paré, wishing to know whether the stone really did have the power to protect against all poisons. “Nonsense,” replied Paré, as no two toxins are exactly the same, no single stone could have the substance to be a universal antidote. “Fine,” said the king. “Then we shall test it to find the truth.” So, the king called up a convicted criminal who had been sentenced to hanging and was soon due to die. A new choice was presented to him. Eat a deadly poison, and then the bezoar. If he was cured, he could go free. The condemned man was no skeptic. He downed a poison prepared by the royal apothecary, greedily followed by gulping down the bezoar. Lo and behold, he died in agony a few hours later, followed by the sizzling sound of a stone as the king tossed the cure-all into the fire.