Drawing © 2007 Jim Jung. All rights reserved

Madstones

When this area was first being cleared and settled snake bites were, if the records of that time are accurate, a fairly common occurrence. Of course snakes were much more common then too, and as a result human-snake interactions were frequent. Remedies for snake bite were therefore legion and high on the list of pioneer medical priorities.

Even more feared, and justifiably so, were rabid animals.

Rabies is a particularly gruesome and horrible way to die since the victim never loses consciousness and is fully aware of the madness right up to the end. In the days before modem vaccines there were no reliable cures — or any cures at all — except for madstones. Madstones were mineral assemblages — usually of diminutive dimensions - that had the peculiar ability to remove toxins and disease organisms (like the Rabies virus) from within the human body.

Some madstones were obtained from animals — any hard object in the stomach of a white deer for instance, peculiar bones in the head of a fish, and possibly the "Jewel" supposedly found in the head of a toad that Shakespeare mentions. Others were actual stones discovered in mines, fields or creeks. Exactly how one determined that a particular stone was a madstone is hard to say since they appeared identical to every other stone around — but somehow and in some manner someone somewhere figured it out.

In the days before the development of the rabies vaccine these madstones were considered extremely valuable. The southern lllinois area at one time boasted possession of at least three of them in various locales but by far the most famous one resided in Golconda, lllinois. It was supposed to have been discovered in an Italian a coal mine and it was, according to John Allen, brought to lllinois from Tennessee sometime before 1870 by a Matthew Trovillion.

According to court records (the stone was the subject of a lawsuit in 1911) the stone was applied to the area of the bite to which it adhered. It was left on the wound until an hour had elapsed or the stone dropped off of its own accord (whichever came fIrst) when it was placed in clean water until bubbles formed on its surface. It was then reapplied and the same procedure followed until it would no longer stick to the victim, after which the victim was pronounced cured.

And it apparently worked! This particular stone was supposed to have been used in hundreds of cases of snake, spider and rabid animal bites and only one person died after its use — apparently from wounds inflicted by the rabid animal rather than from rabies. Whether this efficacy resulted from some inherent property in the stone or was simply a case of the Placebo Effect (if the word simple can be applied to such a complex phenomenon) is unknown. Nevertheless it was believed — and in practice proven — to cure potentially lethal wounds.

The present locations of these madstones and what became of them are currently unknown, at least to me. The Golconda madstone was apparently still in existence in the 1960's since it was viewed by John Allen then but no one seems to be sure of where it is now. Should any of you, Gentle Readers, know of the whereabouts or recent history of these unique objects please contact us here at the Almanac. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.