There is an urban legend fueled by the movie Beverly Hills Cop that people have about 5 pounds of undigested meat in their stomachs by the time they are middle-aged. Not so. But bezoars, which are pearl-like minerals that accumulate around pieces of rock, rarely develop in the intestines of humans and animals. This is a rare and dangerous condition, but animal bezoars have been used for centuries in many places to cure poisoning and disease and are often incorporated into precious jewelry.
From ancient times until the 16th century, bezoars were considered highly desirable objects, which could be worn as talismans or crushed and swallowed. Bezoar is obtained from the intestines of deer, antelope, porcupines, goats, cows and llamas.
A bezoar from the Treasury of the German Order (photo Wikimedia/Wolfgang Sauber)
This practice began in Persia and Arabia around the 1st century AD and spread to Europe. People in the Andes Mountains of South America apparently also used bezoars before Europeans arrived there.
An article in Nautilus stated that Queen Elizabeth I of England, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, had a silver ring with a bezoar and that the light beige of her gown was sometimes described as bezoar .
A gem (Photo by Albert/Flickr)
Bezoar stones form around small rocks or cellulose that get stuck in the digestive tract. Over time, the article said, layers of calcium and magnesium phosphate in the animal’s stomach accumulated around the rock fragments in layers and were then smoothed by muscle contractions.
The Nautilus article quotes a letter to the editor (PDF) in a 1943 issue of the British Medical Journal which stated:
Perhaps Bolus or Bezoar food obstruction is not uncommon and should be considered in the differential diagnosis of obstruction. The legend of bezoars, often recorded in ancient times, is that they are the crystallized tears of deer. The deer ate the snake, causing such severe stomach pain that the animal’s tears flowed and then they froze under the cap like ice. These things fall out and people collect them. Cases of poisoning and other toxic diseases were said to have been cured, and one was used as a last resort after the death of King Charles II. The academically minded surgeon may be interested in seeing what was once a magical stone with life-giving properties now a cause for surgical intervention and a harbinger of evil.
Indeed, WebMD has an article on bezoars stating that they can form in adults and children in the stomach, large intestine, or small intestine. Bezoars can cause nausea and vomiting, decreased appetite, weight loss, and a feeling of fullness after eating only small amounts of food. They can cause intestinal bleeding and stomach ulcers, and if that’s not enough, they can lead to tissue death or necrosis in parts of the digestive tract.
Persian and Greek physicians in the 1st century AD were the first to use animal bezoars. The word comes from the Persian word padzahr. They are used in jewelry as talismans and are also used as antidotes and cures. In the 12th century, the use of bezoars spread to Europe as Christians invaded the Levant.
A 16th-century bezoar at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Photo by Michael Martin/Flickr)
Bezoars have become very popular among wealthy people in Europe, Nautilus said. The article states: By the end of the 17th century, people stopped using them, and by the 19th century, they were considered obsolete, although in China some people still used porcupine bezoars to treat dengue fever.
However, in Europe in the 16th century, before they fell out of favor, a barber-surgeon named Ambrose Paré spoke out against them. To test the effectiveness of bezoars, he gave a criminal the poison mercury chloride and a bezoar. The man died a painful death, reinforcing Paré’s belief that they were ineffective.
