in natural history and medicine, a general name for certain animal-substances supposed to be effectual in preventing the fatal consequences of poison. The word comes from the Persian badzcher, bazcher, or pahazar, which signifies an antidote.

The first mention made of bezoar is in Avicenna, an Arabian physician, who gives a very romantic account of its origin. He describes it as generated of the tears or gum of the eyes of stags; who, after eating serpents, used to run into the water up to the nose, where they stood till their eyes began to ooze a humour, which, collecting under the eye-lids, gradually thickened and coagulated, till, being grown hard, it was thrown off by the animal in rubbing frequently. Other opinions less fabulous obtained till the time of Garcias al Horto, physician to the Portuguese viceroy of the Indies, who gave the first genuine account of it. Kempfer afterwards gave a description of it, with some new particulars.

The bezoar is a calculous concretion found in the stomach of certain animals of the goat kind. See CAPRA. It is composed of concentrical coats surrounding one another, with a little cavity in the middle, containing a bit of wood, straw, hair, or the like substances.

There are two sorts of bezoar; one brought from Persia and the East-Indies, the other from the Spanish West-Indies. The first or best sort, called oriental bezoar, is of a shining dark-green or olive colour, and an even smooth surface; on removing the outward coat, that which lies underneath it appears likewise smooth and shining. The occidental has a rough surface, and less of a green colour than the foregoing; it is likewise much heavier, more brittle, and of a looser texture; the coats are thicker, and on breaking exhibit a number of strie curiously interwoven. The oriental is generally less than a walnut; the occidental for the most part larger, and sometimes as big as a goose egg. The first is universally most esteemed, and is the only sort now retained by the London college: the Edinburgh, in the edition of their pharmacopoeia preceding the present, directed both; but they now seem to allow them to be used promiscuously, retaining in their catalogue only the name bezoar lapis.

This stone is in high esteem among the Persians, and even of greater value than in Europe; which, with sundry other circumstances needless to relate here, has given occasion to many to suspect, that the true bezoar is never brought to us. Some authors relate with great confidence, that all the stones commonly sold under this name are artificial compositions. That some of them are so, is evident; hence the great differences in the accounts which different persons have given of their qualities: the stones examined by Scarl as oriental bezoar did not dissolve in acids; those which Grew and Boyle made trial of, did; those employed by Geoffroy (in some experiments related in the French memoirs Bezoar did not seem to be acted on by rectified spirit; whilst some of those examined by Neumann at Berlin almost totally dissolved therein. The common mark of the goodness of this stone, is its striking a deep green colour on white paper that has been rubbed with chalk.

Bezoar was not known to the ancient Greeks, and is first taken notice of by the Arabians (as above mentioned), who extol it in a great variety of disorders, particularly against poisons. Later writers also bestow extraordinary commendations on it as a sudorific and alexipharmac; virtues to which it certainly has no pretence. It has no smell or taste, is not digestible in the stomach of the animal in which it is found, and is scarce capable of being acted on by any of the juices of the human body. It cannot be considered in any other light than as an absorbent; and is much the weakest of all the common substances of that class. It has been given to half a dram, and sometimes a whole dram, without any sensible effect; though the general dose (on account of its great price) is only a few grains.

a more extensive sense, includes all substances formed stratum super stratum in the stomachs or intestines of animals; in which sense pearls, the concretions called crabs' eyes, &c. belong to the class of bezoars. To this also belong the hippolithus, or bezoar equinum, a stone sometimes found in the stomach or intestines of a horse; the monkey-bezoar, a stone said to be found in the stomachs of certain monkeys in Brazil and the East Indies, harder than the oriental bezoar, of a dark-green colour, and very costly on account of its scarcity.—Bezoar bovinum, is a yellowish stone found in the ox's gall-bladder.—Human bezoars are stony substances found in the intestines of several persons, formed from the stones of plums, or other fruits, retained in the cecum or other guts, and growing coated over, of which we have an instance given by Dr Cole, Phil. Trans. n° 235.—Bezoar micrococcum is the same with the human calculus; and is various in its degrees of hardness, as well as in its size and figure. It has been used in the place of the more costly forts.—As to the bezoar hybricus, a concretion found in the gall-bladder of an Indian porcupine; and the German bezoar, or that found in mountain-deer, especially on the Alps; these, not being stones, are more properly called by late writers agglutipiles; the former consisting of woolly fibres, and a bitter friable matter, having neither laminae nor membranes; the latter being a ball of hair or herbs, or perhaps roots, compacted in the stomach of the animal.—They are all, as medicines, unworthy of regard.—The bezoar bovium, or ox-bezoar, is used by miniature-painters in several casts of yellow.

Bezoar-mineral. See Pharmacy-Index.

Fossil Bezoar, is a kind of figured stone, formed like the animal bezoar, of several coats or strata ranged round some extraneous body which forms a nucleus, and supposed to have the same virtues. It is found chiefly in Sicily, in sand and clay pits. It is of a purple colour, with a rough surface, the size of a walnut, and light. When broken, it is found to be an iron crust containing in its hollow a fine greenish white earth, resembling pale bezoar. The earth is used, and not the shell. It seems to be of the nature of bale Bezoard armeniac. It is also called Sicilian earth.