Some incidents during his youth presage later research and may contribute to explain the sudden transition from anatomical to geological studies by Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686), the Danish anatomist, geologist, and later bishop, in Tuscany in 1666 as a scientist to the Grand Duke. (1) In 1659, during medical studies at Copenhagen University, Steno wrote small notes and made comprehensive excerpts from books on many subjects, the so-called Chaos manuscript. Pondering the shape of a stone in the bladder of an ox, he wrote that something was shown here about the generation of stones in living beings. When presented with the appropriate material and having the support for studies in Tuscany, he took up aspects of lithogenesis such as crystals growing by accretion in water-filled spaces of rocks in the “Prodromus on Solids” of Florence, 1669. He was able to maintain that in living beings, stones are formed likewise in the body’s so-called external water space. (2) In the “Prodromus on Solids,” Steno proposed the principle of molding as a marker for the relative age of related objects, the first of three criteria that allow reliable inferences to be drawn from present processes back to those unobservable processes of Earth in the past. The process of molding was in itself well known to Steno from his childhood, being commonplace in the family’s goldsmith workshop. It is shown here that Steno used molding in his “Dissection of a Dogfish” less than two years before he included the molding principle as a clue to relative age in past processes. (3) The study of teeth from the head of a giant shark led Steno to conclude that such teeth and glossopetrae have common origin, i.e., that fossils have a biological origin, as described in the “Carcharodon-head Dissected” (1667). Steno could have been primed by a long-held knowledge of glossopetrae learned from his teacher, Professor Thomas Bartholin, who recorded them in a manuscript that he listed as lost in a fire in 1670. Steno applied comparisons showing sufficient similarity as his second criterion for obtaining reliable information on processes of the past.

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 The analysis of historical references to fossils in these ancient literary, geological, medical and magical texts has been named Cryptopalaeontology, a discipline that also includes discoveries of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 transition from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century represented an interesting time in the development of the Materia Medica, with the traditional ‘Galenical’ approach being progressively replaced by the ‘Chymical’ approach, a necessary precursor to modern pharmacology. Four surviving complete and partial Materia Medica cabinets belonging to Sir Hans Sloane, John Vigani, John Addenbrooke and William Heberden form the focus for a consideration of changing practices in the medicinal use of geological materials over this period. The working and teaching cabinets contain both processed and unprocessed specimens of geological simples. Of these, some were waning in popularity (e.g. nephrite jade, Irish slate, pyrite and garnets, jet and cannel coal), others were hardly ever used (e.g. belemnites, echinoid spines, Goa Stone, hematite and aetites), whilst others still continued to be popular, either in raw or processed form (e.g. amber, cinnabar, selenite and Terra Sigillata ). The collections, considered in the context of contemporary literature, provide a unique insight into this dynamic period in the history of pharmacy.

Abstract The Paper Museum comprises c. 10 000 drawings and prints, most of which are in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. When viewed in their seventeenth-century context, 25 of these drawings depict ‘geological’ material that also served as materia medica: earths, calculi, bezoars, toadstones, corals, calcifying alga, fungus stone, lodestone, eagle-stones, Bologna stone, amber, amulets, figured stones and gems. Some of these are listed in the official 1639 pharmacopoeia of Rome. Eleven of these drawings are reproduced here, nine of them for the first time. A single drawing may depict up to 25 specimens, many of which were in the collections of members of the Academy of the Lynxes (Lincei) or collectors known to them. The archives of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657) confirm the Lincei’s interest both in Paracelsian chemistry and in materia medica. Cassiano owned copies of two fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts listing more than 34 minerals with their therapeutic uses. The Lincei also published a sixteenth-century manuscript containing 26 ‘minerals suitable for medical use’: De materia medica Novae Hispaniae , by Francisco Hernández (1651), whose work in materia medica has been lauded as ‘the most original … in the entire Renaissance’.

Abstract In 1746 the case of a young woman vomiting stones, nails, glasses and other foreign bodies came to the notice of the general scientific and religious communities. The Bishop of Cremona, Alessandro Maria Litta (1671–1754), deemed that a scientific–medical approach was necessary. Paolo Valcarenghi (d. 1780), one of the most famous of Cremona’s physicians, was charged with this task. Many physicians, both local and from the wider area of Northern Italy, became actively involved in the discussion: Martino Ghisi (1715–1794), who was the first to describe diphtheria on a scientific basis; Carlo Francesco Cogrossi (1682–1769, Professor of Practical Medicine at Padua University), who is noted for his parasitic theory of contagion; Carlo Gandini (1705–1788), who introduced some typical traditional Chinese Medicine practices into Italian medicine; and Francesco Roncalli Parolino (1692–1769), who recorded the case in his work entitled Europae medicina a sapientibus illustrata et a comite Francisco Roncalli Parolino observationibus adaucta (1747), a foundational work in the reconstruction of medical praxis in Europe. Their work is amongst the earliest texts from the Italian Peninsula to deny the natural formation of stones in the stomach, with the debate between the religious and scientific communities resulting in the acceptance of the medical explanation.

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.