Paracelsus, the gifted and brilliant thinker, scientist, and, we must probably add, charlatan of the sixteenth century, whose really extraordinary mental endowment was largely wasted in the effort to impress his followers with the idea that he had a mystic control over supernatural agencies, was the owner of a talismanic jewel which he asserted to be the dwelling-place of a powerful spirit named “Azoth.” Some old portraits of the philosopher, or pseudo-philosopher, figure him wearing this jewel, in whose virtues we may fairly doubt that he himself believed, but which furnished part of the paraphernalia be freely employed to gain influence over the credulous.[4] The following passage from the “Faithful Lapidary” of Thomas Nicols,[5] who wrote in the middle of the seventeenth century, illustrates the prevailing opinion in England at that time as to the virtues of precious stones: _Perfectionem effectûs contineri in causa._ But it cannot truly be so spoken of gemms and precious stones, the effects of which, by Lapidists are said to be, the making of men rich and eloquent, to preserve men from thunder and lightning, from plagues and diseases, to move dreams, to procure sleep, to foretell things to come, to make men wise, to strengthen memory, to procure honours, to hinder fascinations and witchcrafts, to hinder slothfulness, to put courage into men, to keep men chaste, to increase friendship, to hinder difference and dissention, and to make men invisible, as is feigned by the Poet concerning Gyges ring, and affirmed by Albertus and others concerning the _ophthalmius lapis_, and many other strange things are affirmed of them and ascribed to them, which are contrary to the nature of gemms, and which they as they are materiall, mixt, inanimate bodies neither know nor can effect, by the properties and faculties of their own constitutions: because they being naturall causes, can produce none other but naturall effects, such as are all the ordinary effects of gemms: that is, such effects as flow from their elementary matter, from their temper, form and essence; such as are the operations of hot and cold, and of all the first qualities, and all such accidents as do arise from the commixtion of the first qualities: such as are hardnesse, heavinesse, thicknesse, colour, and tast. These all are the naturall faculties of gemms, and these are the known effects of the union of their matter, and of the operation of the first qualities one upon another.