The livers of certain animals provided concretions called haraczi by the Arabs; these were much used as remedies for epilepsy. The Turkish butchers, when slaughtering animals, always examined the livers carefully so as to secure these stones. As the Jews were said to suffer much from melancholia and epileptic disorders they valued the liver-stones very highly.[385] The use of fossils as talismans and for the cure of diseases was mainly due to their strange and various forms. As color played the most important part in the case of precious stones, each color being looked upon as possessing a certain symbolic significance fitting the stone for some special use or uses, so in the case of fossils the form was the determining factor. Sometimes it was as the form of some creature held by the superstitious to be particularly endowed with mysterious qualities beneficial to mankind, at other times the fossil form suggested some part of the human body, and was therefore believed to afford protection to this part, or to cure any disease affecting it. This will be made clearer by a brief notice of some of the principal fossils which were favored in ancient and medieval times, either by popular superstition or by those who from interested motives made use of these superstitions for the purpose of gain, although they may have only half believed in the real virtue of the objects they sold. [Illustration: Lapis Judaicus. Pentremite heads. From “Museum Wormianum,” Lugduni Batavorum, 1655. ] The remedial quality of fossils, which were believed to have been formed from shells and marine animals deposited during the deluge, is ascribed by Mentzel to the fact that they had been produced by the action of fire, and hence had the same quality as though prepared and calcined by the chemist’s art. They were therefore believed to have great medicinal virtues in the cure of diseases.[386]