Bizarre Bezoar

Life is all about bezoars this morning. They're calcified concretions (of the hairball variety) that develop inside ruminants. Highly-prized for their anti-poison action, they were harvested from deer, monkeys, hedgehogs, llamas, goats... in colours ranging from yellow to purple and sizes from teeny-tiny robin's eggs to whopping great oranges.

Bezoars were housed in elaborate cases, or set into chains (to be immersed in any vessel), or mounted at the base of 'poison-cups', a permanent protection against toxic drink. They were also set in rings, instead of gemstones: chew chew, sip, suck on jewellry, chew, sip... Yummy.

So if, like Captain Alonso de Contreras, your breakfast eggs were laced with arsenic, and the restorative fruit cordial adminstered was also poisoned, and then the next day when you thought you were able to face a little something - that too was poisoned (but your bodyguard dismissed your sufferings as the aftereffects of yesterday's poison, and ate your lunch, and died) - a bezoar stone was pretty essential.

And although the phrase 'caveat emptor' comes from a famous case in English common law about a fraudelent bezoar stone, bezoars do actually neutralise arsenic (thanks to the phosphate and sulphur compounds in their composition).

Goa stones - bezoars mixed with yet more treaty things - were a genius Jesuit spin-off industry in the late 17C. Forget gilding the lily. This is gilding the ginormous gakky hairball...