Lap. Cancror. Spur, c1745-1807

Description

Glass jar, with glass lid and paper labels, containing specimens of false ‘crab’s eyes’, lapides cancrorum. From the Burges Collection.

Text on paper labels reads ‘Catal. Mat. Med. p. 114. No. 51’ and ‘LAP. CANCROR. SPUR.’

Pomet, in his Compleat History of Druggs, says that the lapis cancrorum is ‘a little white Stone, made in Form of Eyes, from whence they take their Name…which are found in the Head of the large River Crab’, but that ‘what we sell now under the Denomination of Crabs Eyes, was nothing but a white Earth wash’d, and made into little Pastiles or Troches’.

He adds that ‘There are several Preparations of them, but the levigated Powder is only us’d, and that chiefly to absorb Acids, open Obstructions, and cleanse the urinary Passages of Gravel; to provoke Urine, and bring away the Stone, and other tartarous Coagulations’.