{{short description|Folk belief in Europe and the Near East}} {{for|the mushroom|Mycena aetites}} thumb|right|Eagle stone amulet, seventeenth century, from the Bavarian and Austrian amulet collection of W. L. Hildburgh, originally gifted to the Wellcome Museum. In the magical tradition of Europe and the Near East (see: Magic in the Greco-Roman world), the '''aetites''' (singular in Latin) or '''aetite''' (anglicized) is a stone used to promote childbirth. It is also called an '''eagle-stone''',<ref>The eagle-stone is defined as "the common name of the aetite" by Thomas Wright, ''Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English'' (London, 1886), p. 414 [https://books.google.com/books?id=1KAXAAAAYAAJ&dq=aetite&pg=PA414 online.]</ref> '''aquiline''', or '''aquilaeus'''. The stone is said to prevent spontaneous abortion and premature delivery, while shortening labor and birth for a full-term birth.<ref name="Johnston1999">{{cite book | author = Sarah Iles Johnston | date = 3 May 1999 | title = Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece | publisher = University of California Press | page = 167 | isbn = 978-0-520-21707-2 | oclc = 1000963626 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=qbihKIJw_OUC&pg=PA167}}</ref>
From Theophrastus onwards, the belief is also recorded that the stone had the ability to "give birth" to other stones, based on the crystals found within. This fed into the belief that at least some minerals could be gendered into male and female forms.<ref>Harris, 47-48</ref>
==Mineralogy== The aetites is a limonite or siderite concretionary nodules or geodes possessing inside a small loose stone rattle when shaken.<ref name="online">{{cite book | author = Jacqueline Marie Musacchio | date = 1999 | title = The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy | publisher = Yale University Press | pages = 140– | isbn = 978-0-300-07629-5 | oclc = 1000673550 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=mAnixotLnFQC&pg=PA140}}</ref> An official publication of the United States Bureau of Mines in 1920 defined an aetite: {{blockquote|A nodule consisting of a hard shell of hydrated oxide of iron, within which the yellow oxide becomes progressively softer toward the center, which is sometimes quite empty.<ref name="U.S. Government Printing Office1920">{{cite book | date = 1920 | title = Bulletin, Issue 95 | publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office | pages = 18– | oclc = 1282174 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=j4o9Rp90M9kC&pg=PA18}}</ref>}}
The American Geosciences Institute defines the eaglestone as "a concretionary nodule of clay ironstone about the size of a walnut that the ancients believed an eagle takes to her nest to facilitate egg-laying."<ref name="Springer Berlin Heidelberg2003">{{cite book | date = 23 April 2003 | title = Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms | edition = 2 | publisher = Springer Berlin Heidelberg | pages = 179– | isbn = 978-3-540-01271-9 | oclc = 271877702 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=OV9KBUoknFIC&pg=PA179}}</ref>
==Ancient medicine== According to Pedanius Dioscorides (5.160), the aetite should be fastened to the left arm to protect the fetus; at the time of birth, it should be moved to the hip area to ease delivery.<ref name="StolWiggermann2000">{{cite book | author1 = Marten Stol | author2 = F. A. M. Wiggermann | date = 1 January 2000 | title = Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting | publisher = BRILL | page = 50 | isbn = 978-90-72371-89-8 | oclc = 1157706410 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-n4LQNeU1ckC&pg=PA50}}</ref> He also recommends them for the treatment of epilepsy, and says that when mixed with meat they will "betray a thief".<ref>Harris, 53</ref>
Pliny the Elder describes four types of aetites in his ''Natural History''<ref>{{cite book | author = Pliny (the Elder.) | date = 1857 | title = The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 6 | publisher = H. G. Bohn | pages = 364– | oclc = 11430049 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=IEoMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA364}}</ref> and outlines their magico-medical use:
{{blockquote|Attached to pregnant women or to cattle, in the skins of animals that have been sacrificed, these stones act as a preventive of abortion, care being taken not to remove them till the moment of parturition; for otherwise procidence of the uterus is the result. If, on the other hand, they are not removed at the moment when parturition is about to ensue, that operation of Nature cannot be effected.<ref>Pliny, ''Natural History'' 36.39.</ref>}}
Pliny says that the stone is found in the nests of eagles, who cannot propagate without them.
The fourth-century magico-medical text ''Cyranides'' also claims that the aetite worn as an amulet can prevent miscarriage caused by female demons such as Gello.<ref>Sarah Iles Johnston, ''Restless Dead'' (University of California Press, 1999), p. 167.</ref><ref name="StolWiggermann2000" />
===Jewish medical practice=== Jewish women used birthing stones, and the Talmud refers to the "preserving stone," worn as an amulet even during Shabbat to prevent miscarriage.<ref>Talmud Bavli Shabbat 66b.</ref> Although medieval sources point to the eagle-stone, the identification is not certain. Rabbis in medieval France and Germany, and a Polish talmudist in the 16th century, describe the stone as hollow, with a smaller stone inside: "the stone within a stone represented a fetus in the womb." One medieval French source says that the stone "is pierced through the middle, and is round, about as large and heavy as a medium sized egg, glassy in appearance, and is to be found in the fields."<ref name="Jewish Publication Society1998">{{cite book | date = 1998 | title = A Time to Be Born | publisher = Jewish Publication Society | pages = 38 | isbn = 978-0-8276-1064-4 | oclc = 1036901148 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=0G1GwpbHRRcC&pg=PA38}}</ref>
==Medicine to 1700== The aetite, to be carried by pregnant women on their right side, is mentioned by Ruberto Bernardi in his 1364 book of popular medical lore. The Italian Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino ascribes the aetite's ability to ease childbirth to the astrological influences of the planet Venus and the Moon.<ref name="online"/> In 1494, Isabella d'Este, the marchioness of Mantua, expressed her confidence in the power of these stones.
The aetite appears in a Spanish work on natural magic by Hernando Castrillo, first published in 1636.<ref>Lynn Thorndike, ''A History of Magic and Experimental Science'', p. 334.</ref> Alvaro Alonso Barba's work on metallurgy (Madrid, 1640) touts the efficacy of the ''aetites'', advising that the stone be tied to the left arm to prevent spontaneous abortion, and to the right arm for the opposite effect. The work was widely reviewed, reprinted and translated.<ref>Full title ''Arte de los metales en que se enseña el verdadero beneficio de los de oro y plata por açogue. El modo de fundir los todos y como se han de refinar y apartar unos de ostros''. Thorndike, pp. 258 and 260.</ref>
The 1660 book ''Occult Physick'' said the aetite {{blockquote|is white and round like a Tennis-ball, and hath a stone that shaketh within it. Being worn it delivereth women in their extremity, but at any other time it is not to be used by them that are with Child. It is good to be worn for the Stone … Feavers and Plague. It doth also dissolve the knobs of the Kings Evil ''(i.e., scrofula)'', being bound to the place grieved.<ref>William Williams "Philosophus", ''Occult Physick'' (London, 1660), p. 94, quoted in {{cite book | author = Lynn Thorndike | date = 1958 | title = A History of Magic and Experimental Science: & 8. The seventeenth century | publisher = Columbia University Press | pages = 262– | isbn = 978-0-231-08800-8 | oclc = 1023871630 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=0NSR2lWupUAC&pg=PA262}}</ref>}}
Aetite, along with hematite, was the subject of a 1665 book by J.L. Bausch, municipal physician ({{Lang|de|Stadtphysikus}}) of Schweinfurt and founder of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Bausch, however, cautions that empty promises of the stone's powers exceed the limits of both medicine and nature.<ref name="Thorndike1958">Full title in Latin ''Scediasmata bina curiosa de lapide haematite et aetite ad mentem Academiae Naturae Curiosorum congesta''. {{cite book | author = Lynn Thorndike | date = 1958 | title = A History of Magic and Experimental Science: & 8. The seventeenth century | publisher = Columbia University Press | pages = 262– | isbn = 978-0-231-08800-8 | oclc = 1023871630 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=0NSR2lWupUAC&pg=PA262}}</ref> Thomas Browne affirmed the stone's application to obstetrics in his ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'' (1672), but doubted the story about eagles.<ref>Thomas Browne, ''Pseudodoxia Epidemica'' (1672) II. v. 9, as cited by Stol, ''Birth in Babylonia and the Bible'', p. 50, note 15.</ref>
The stones were expensive; in Scotland, Anna Balfour included her stone as a bequest in a will,<ref>William Fraser, ''Memorials of the family of Wemyss of Wemyss'', vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 232-3.</ref> and English women borrowed and shared these stones to use as amulets in pregnancy.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Evans |first1=Jennifer |title="A Toste wett in Muskadine": Preventing Miscarriage in Early Modern English Recipe Books c.1600–1780 |journal=Women's Writing |date=2 October 2022 |volume=29 |issue=4 |pages=514–532 |doi=10.1080/09699082.2022.2116876|doi-access=free |hdl=2299/26825 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>
==Selected bibliography== *Harris, Nichola Erin, ''The idea of lapidary medicine'', 2009, Rutgers University, Ph.D. dissertation (book forthcoming), [http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.2/rucore10001600001.ETD.000051356#sthash.V1Vj3046.dpuf available online as PDF] *Stol, Marten. ''Birth in Babylonia and the Bible''. Styx Publications, 2000. Limited preview [https://books.google.com/books?id=-n4LQNeU1ckC&dq=%22stones+to+prevent+miscarriage%22&pg=PA50 online.] *Thorndike, Lynn. ''A History of Magic and Experimental Science.''<ref>Thorndike's multi-volume classic work is available widely online, where it is often not identified accurately by volume and year.</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
Category:European folklore Category:Traditional medicine Category:History of ancient medicine Category:History of magic Category:Mineralogy Category:Magic items Category:Mythological substances Category:Mythological medicines and drugs