Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15200

    An unusually big bezoar stone

    Date
    18 September 1636
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p3
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 333mm
    width (page): 223mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    This image of a bezoar stone accompanies a text translated from Dutch to French, and signed by the notary and translator Jacobus van de Ven on 18 September 1636.

    The text describes a bezoar stone as witnessed by several Dutch physicians in 1636. This manuscript was presented at the meeting of the Royal Society on 19 August 1663 by Edward Waterhouse, the son of a fishmonger and great-nephew of Sir Edward Waterhouse, chancellor of the exchequer in Ireland, who had been nominated to the Fellowship of the Society by John Wilkins.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 19 August 1663, ‘Mr. Waterhouse presented the society with a manuscript attested by a public notary of Amsterdam, containing the relation of an [o]ccidental bezoar of an extraordinary size, weighing near seven pounds, and having been formerly tried at Amsterdam (where a certain citizen was possessor of it) by several physicians, apothecaries, and druggists of the said city, to be a true natural bezoar. This paper was ordered to be filed up’ (Birch 1:293).
    Related fellows
    Edward Waterhouse (1619 - 1670, British) , Author
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Netherlands
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