A historical instance of the use of the bloodstone to check a hemorrhage is recorded in the case of Giorgio Vasari (1514-1578), the author of the lives of the Italian painters of the Renaissance period. On a certain occasion, when the painter Luca Signorelli (1439-1521) was placing one of his pictures in a church at Arezzo, Vasari, who was present, was seized with a violent hemorrhage and fainted away. Without a moment’s hesitation, Signorelli took from his pocket a bloodstone amulet and slipped it down between Vasari’s shoulder-blades. The hemorrhage is said to have ceased immediately.[508] The bloodstone was used as a remedy by the Indians of New Spain, and Monardes notes that they often cut the material into the shape of hearts. This seems a very appropriate form for an object used to check hemorrhages. The best effect was attained when the stone was first dipped in cold water and then held by the patient in his right hand. Of course the application of any cold object would serve to congeal the blood, but the connection with the heart vanishes in the direction to place the stone in the _right_ hand. Monardes states that both Spaniards and Indians used the bloodstone in this way.[509] The Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, a missionary to the Mexican Indians, shortly after the Spanish Conquest, writes that in 1576 he cured many natives who were at the point of death from hemorrhage, a result of the plague, by causing them to hold in the hand a piece of bloodstone. By this means he claims to have saved many lives.[510] Robert Boyle, in his “Essay about the Origin and Virtues of Gems” (London, 1672, pp. 177-78), tells of a gentleman of his acquaintance who was “of a complexion extraordinary sanguin,” and was much afflicted with bleeding of the nose. A gentlewoman sent to him a bloodstone, directing him to wear it suspended from his neck, and from the time he put it on he was no longer troubled with his malady. It recurred, however, if he removed the stone. When Boyle objected that this might be a result of imagination, his friend disposed of his objection by relating the instance of a woman to whom the stone had been applied when she was unconscious from loss of blood. Nevertheless, as soon as it touched her, the flow of blood was checked. Boyle states that this stone did not seem to him to resemble a true bloodstone. It may have been that the cold of the stone congealed the blood, or that the flow was checked by exhaustion. Index A Aaron, 102, 277, 300, 310, 318 Abdul Hamid, Sultan, 139 Abraham, diamond of, 377 luminous stones in his city, 161, 276 Abrasax (Abraxas), 126-130 meaning of name, 127 Acrostics expressed with stones, 359-362 _Adamas_ (diamond?), 39, 95, 157, 163 of high-priest, 278 Adam’s Peak, Ceylon, gems from, 75 Adelbert, St., 164 Ælian, 161 Ætites, 34 Agalmatolite, 48