?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(MEDICINE.) "Snake stone" and accompanying manuscript description. Small piece of smoothed bone, 1 1/2 x 3/4 inches, with accompanying manuscript description on a 5 x 7 3/4-inch sheet; moderate wear, folds, foxing, and repaired tears to the description. [South Carolina, circa 1800]
Snake stones (usually made from bone rather than stone) remain a popular folk medicine belief in parts of Africa, South America, and Asia. This stone and its description, found among the archives of the Angel Oak plantation in South Carolina, seem to be an example of African folk medicine passing over from slave to master. The description, in a late 18th or early 19th century hand, reads "This stone his called a snake stone. It is to draw the pison from the bite of a snake. Put it to the wound of the snake and it will immediately draw the pison of the snake ought. When it has been on for ten or fifteen minuits, take it of and throw it in warm water for a few minuits for the hot water to draw ought the pison. . . . Wipe it dry and apply it to the wound again. . . . After apply a poult[ice] of sault and yallow leaf and onions or skillions with planting in the poultous will make a shore coure." The description was apparently folded around the stone with docketing for easy reference.
