Why Was a Lump From a Goat's Stomach Worth More Than Gold? It Cured Poison
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A hard mass formed in an animal's digestive system was believed for centuries to neutralise any poison, was traded at enormous prices, and was tested in one of the earliest controlled experiments.
What the object actually is
The mass forms inside the stomach or intestine when indigestible material accumulates and compacts rather than passing through, building up in layers over months or years into a hard smooth stone. Hair is the commonest material in animals that groom, plant fibre in grazing animals, and a range of other material in various species. Goats, particularly certain wild goats of Persia and India, produce a smooth dark green or brown stone that was the type most valued. The same thing occurs in humans, where it is a medical condition requiring removal rather than a treasure.
What it was believed to do
The claims made for it were sweeping and were taken seriously:
- •Neutralising any poison, whether swallowed or in a wound
- •Working by being dropped into a drink or scraped into it
- •Protecting against plague and various fevers
- •Curing melancholy, epilepsy and a range of other complaints
- •Set in gold and worn, so the wearer was permanently protected
- •Owned by royalty, listed in inventories and left in wills
The experiment that tested it
The French surgeon Ambroise Pare doubted the claim and, around 1567, arranged a test that is frequently cited as an early controlled experiment. A cook at the royal court had been condemned to hang for theft and was offered his life if he agreed to swallow a poison and then be treated with the stone. He agreed, was given a poison, was given the stone, and died in considerable pain some hours later. Pare published the result and the object's reputation was damaged among physicians, though it continued to be traded and worn for a long time afterwards, since a court demonstration does not easily displace a belief that expensive people have invested in.
How the trade worked
The objects were a genuine luxury commodity with a supply chain and a market, which is why so much documentation survives. The most valued came from wild goats in Persia and were traded westward through Goa and Lisbon by Portuguese merchants from the sixteenth century, arriving in Europe already mounted or loose. Prices are recorded at many times their weight in gold, and royal inventories list them individually. That created exactly the incentive that produces fraud, and counterfeits made of clay, chalk and compressed plant material circulated widely, which generated its own literature of tests for authenticity, none of which worked.
Whether it ever worked
Modern examination has found a limited and specific basis for part of the claim, which is a more interesting answer than either total dismissal or vindication. Work published in 1979 tested stones against arsenic solutions and found that they did remove arsenic compounds, by two mechanisms, with the sulphur compounds in degraded hair binding one form and the phosphate in the mineral portion exchanging with another. That is real chemistry and applies to arsenic. It offers nothing against the great majority of poisons, works only if the poison and the stone are in contact, and could not have helped somebody who had already swallowed a substantial dose, which is what the test in 1567 demonstrated.
The takeaway
Indigestible material compacting in a stomach over months forms a hard layered stone, which was believed to neutralise any poison and was set in gold and traded at enormous prices. Pare tested the claim around 1567 on a condemned cook, who died. Later analysis found that the stones do remove arsenic compounds by two chemical routes, which is real and applies to very little else.