A type of snake-stone used in Asia Minor is described as being of a pearly white hue, rounded on one side, and flat on the other. Toward the edge of the flat side runs a fine, wavy, bluish line, the undulations of which are fancied to figure a serpent. The victim of a snake-bite first had the spot rubbed with some kind of sirup; then the stone was applied to the bitten spot, and it would adhere to the inflamed surface for eight days; at the expiration of this time it would fall off. The bite would be entirely healed and would not be followed by ill effects of any kind.[460] A novel theory in regard to the formation of a type of snake-stones is given by an old Chinese writer. This is that snakes, before they begin to hibernate, swallow some yellow earth and retain this in the gullet until they come forth again in the springtime, when they cast it forth. By this time the earth has acquired the consistency of a stone, the surface remaining yellow, while the interior is black. If picked up during the second phase of the moon this concretion was thought to be a cure for children’s convulsions, and for gravel, and was powdered and given in infusion. The infusion could also be applied with advantage externally to envenomed swellings.[461] An old manuscript found in a manor house in Essex, England, contains a translation, made in 1732 by an Oxford student, E. Swinton, of some details on the snake-stone, taken from a work published in the same year at Bologna by Nicolo Campitelli. After noting that these stones came from the province of Kwang-shi in China and from different places in India, their appearance and qualities are described. In color they were almost black, some having pale gray or ash-color spots. The test of the genuineness of such a stone was to apply it to the lips; if not a spurious one, it would cling so closely to the membrane that considerable force must be exerted to separate it therefrom. The usual directions are given for its employment in the cure of snake bites, but its usefulness by no means ended here; its curative power was also exhibited in the case of “Scrophulous Eruptions and Pestilential Bubos,” and it could be used in the treatment of malignant tremors, venereal disorders, etc. With the manuscript was found a specimen snake-stone. This was described as being a thin oval body, about an inch in length and three-quarters of an inch broad; the color was gray with light streaks, and the surface was bright and polished. It was of the consistency of horn, and the writer of the note in the “Lancet” believes that it was part of a stag’s antler or some similar substance, from which the animal matter had been removed by the action of heat; many of the Oriental snake-stones are of this type, but, as we have already seen, a great variety of more or less porous materials have been and are still used in this way in different parts of the world. A practical experiment was made in 1867 by Dr. John Schrott, who excited six cobras