Schwalbenstein
Celidonius - Swallow's Stone. Illustration from the Hortus sanitatis Mainz 1491
Schwalbenstein ( celidonius ) was the name Dioscurides and Pliny used to call concrements in the 1st century that were extracted from the stomachs of the first swallow brood. Without touching the earth, the swallow stones were wrapped in the skin of a calf or a deer and carried on the arm or on the neck. So they should protect the wearer from the "divine disease" .
In the 14th century Konrad von Megenberg made a distinction between a red swallow stone and a white swallow stone, the effects of which he judged as different, sometimes opposite.
literature
- Karl Olbrich. Schwalbenstein . In: Concise dictionary of German superstition . De Gruyter, Berlin 1936, Volume VII, Col. 1400-1402
Individual evidence
- ^ Dioscurides. De materia medica. Book II Chapter 60 (digitized version)
- ↑ Pliny. Naturalis historia . Volume XI 203; Volume XXXVII 154
- ↑ Konrad von Megenberg. Book of nature . Edition Pfeiffer 1861, VI, 17 (digitized version)
- ^ Hortus sanitatis . Mainz 1491. De Lapidibus , Chapter 33 (digitized version )
- ^ Hortus sanitatis. Strasbourg 1529. Of the stones, chapter 33 (digitized version)
- ↑ Nicolas Lémery . Complete material lexicon . Complete material lexicon. First drafted in French, but now after the third edition, which has been enlarged by a large [...] edition, translated into Hochteutsche / by Christoph Friedrich Richtern, [...]. Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Braun, 1721. Sp. 541–542 (digitized version )