Abstract: Lapidaries, or books on stones, formed a historical literary genre which compiled information on the nature and properties of various stones together with their therapeutic applications. One of the mythical stones described in these lapidaries is the Cock Stone or Alectorius. For the most part, authors agree upon both its origins inside the body and its therapeutic uses, although opinion differs as to the exact organ from which it was obtained. It may represent a biliary calculus. The healing properties cited for the Cock Stone are, at first sight, unrelated. However, when viewed in the light of modern physiological understanding, the pharmacological properties ascribed to Alectorius may be related to the effects of parasympathomimetic substances.

Abstract Fossils were credited with magico-medicinal properties in lapidary books written from the second century BCE onwards. The analysis of historical references to fossils in these ancient literary, geological, medical and magical texts has been named Cryptopalaeontology, a discipline that also includes discoveries of fossils at archaeological sites and the study of oral traditions. Theophrastus’ Perì líthôn (third century BCE), the four apocryphal Greek lapidaries ( Líthica Orphéôs , Orphéôs Líthica Kêrygmata , Socrátous Dionísou perì líthôn and Damigeron–Evax : second century BCE), Pliny the Elder’s Historiae Naturae, Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica (first century CE), Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiarum (seventh century) and Alfonso X’s Libro de las Piedras (thirteenth century) all contain frequent references to fossils. In this context, these works might be considered the oldest treatises on fossils ever written. The talismanic use of most of these fossils against a wide range of diseases was based on sympathetic magic. Only a few (e.g. Lapis Gagates, amber and Lapis Bitumen) survive in recent pharmacopoeia.

Abstract The search for remedies to treat dental disease is as old as mankind; such is the importance of the stomatognathic system (mouth, jaws, teeth and related structures) in the evolution of man and society. This paper concentrates on the Kitab al-tasrif , a medical treatise completed in 1000 CE by the famous Arab physician, surgeon and pharmacologist Abulcasis ( Abu al-Qasim al Zahrawi ; 936–1013), from Córdoba (Andalusia, southern Spain). Volume ( Maqal ) XXI of this 30-volume-long work, is dedicated to mineral panaceas for diseases of the mouth and teeth. The remedies detailed by Abulcasis are compared with those in Dioscorides’ much earlier Materia Medica (first century CE), the later Hortus sanitatis (1496) by Johannes de Cuba and recent pharmacopoeias to trace and evaluate the evolutionary path of mineral-containing drugs and dental compounds, and to account for the survival of many of them in therapeutic compounds. Although effective, some of the old mineral remedies have a narrow therapeutic range and have no place in current pharmacology; however, many of them are still useful as astringents, haemostatics, antiseptics, teeth whiteners, remineralizers or caustics.