Ruminant bezoar in an antique chagrin case lined with red ve - Lot 106

Lot n° 106
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Estimation :
3000 - 4000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 11 440EUR
Ruminant bezoar in an antique chagrin case lined with red ve - Lot 106
Ruminant bezoar in an antique chagrin case lined with red velvet. Inscribed KIT AB or KIH AB. H. 4 - L. 7.3 cm - Weight : 196.1 g It is accompanied by a handwritten note "Saved from the hands of a secondhand dealer at Professor Roux's sale, and offered to the old friend of the family and of his childhood Mr. [Segaly] by Leon h. Labarru[que?] May 22, 1854". The bezoar - whose name comes from the Persian pad (remedy) and zahr (venom or poison) - is a stony concretion made of hair, fibers and plants that forms in the stomachs of certain ruminants. The weight of this substance, composed of concentric layers of calcium phosphate, can be explained by its formation around a stone in the animal's intestines. These stones can be as large as a goose egg. They were considered antidotes to poisons, and were used as a powder for ingestion or as an ointment. Since the Middle Ages, bezoars have been highly prized objects, some worthy of gold-plated mounts; they were traded at a premium, sometimes transformed into jewelry or talismans. In this case, the small chips and wear clearly testify to the pharmaceutical use of this bezoar, and highlight the different strata of which it is made. The Professor Roux mentioned in the handwritten note was probably the physician-surgeon Philibert-Joseph Roux, born in Auxerre in 1780 and who died of a stroke in Paris on March 23, 1854. The inscription Ki(t)Ab, "book" in Arabic, may be related to the Kitab al-Jamahir fima'rifat al-jawahir (Book of Multiple Knowledge of Precious Stones) written by Al-Bīrūnī, Afzal Muammad ibn Amad Abū al-Reān, a Persian scholar who was a mathematician, philosopher, traveler, astronomer, pharmacologist, historian and astrologer, who wrote about bezoars: " .. this stone should be the most expensive of all, for if jewels enhance the person, the bezoar stone protects body and soul from harmful influences".
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