The great physician Galen used the sapphire “for expelling the hot humours of the body,” which unfavourable health condition is included in astrological philosophy on the evils of the sign Aquarius. The sign also, as the astrologer Raphael says, “has particular rule over the eyesight, and the Sun conjoined with Saturn therein is a sure sign of blindness.” Ancient writers say that he who gazes into a sapphire will charm away all threatened injury to his eyes, and Marbodus recommends that a sapphire “dissolved in milk” takes the sting from “dimmed eyes.” For removing foreign bodies from the eye, specks of dust, sand, etc., it was recommended that a sapphire be held a while on the closed eyelid and then drawn gently and slowly several times across from the nose to the corner of the eye. It is one of the old principles in medicine, astrologically administered, that the cause of the disease can also be used as a cure, whilst another rule advises the virtue of opposites. In this latter connection it was said that a sapphire placed near the heart would fortify that organ—the sign of Heaven “ruling” the heart is Leo, and Aquarius is exactly opposite to Leo in the Zodiac. In homœopathic medicine aconite in proper proportion is administered to reduce fevers and inflamed conditions. Astrologically, aconite is a herb of Saturn. Saturn is, like the herb, cold and contracting whilst Mars is warm and expanding. The blood and mental faculties are liable to disorder in certain people born with Aquarius rising at birth or with the Sun therein: and the sapphire was the panacea which also, it was said, stopped bleeding of the nose if held against the temples. In old pharmacies the sapphire held a place of importance and its reputed curative virtue led to its employment as a charm against swellings, boils, ruptures, profuse perspirations, poisons, melancholy, flatulence and other bodily inharmonies. It was also employed as a charm against enchantment, danger, treachery, quarrels between friends, evil suggestions and undue influence. Porta in his work on “Natural Magic,” 1561, writes of the value of the sapphire in all magical and religious ceremonies, protecting the wearer from the Larvae of the lower spiritual world and from the snakes and poisonous reptiles of the world of matter. It was considered intensely powerful as a destroyer of poisonous insects which it was said to kill if placed at the mouth of a vessel in which they were imprisoned. Boetius (“De Natura Gemmarum”) writes that the sapphire was worn by priests as an emblem of chastity, for none of evil thoughts, bad minds or vicious habits dare wear this gem of pure heavenly love which was used of old by those consulting the sacred oracles. In his messages to the Bishops of the 12th century Pope Innocent III asked that they should have their pure gold rings set with “that stone which is the true seal of secrecy.” When the Roman Catholic