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Show Pearls as Medicine. x Scotland still produces pearls, found mainly in the fresh water mussel. Cleopatra was not the only person who swallowed a dissolved pearl. Until Un-til comparatively recent, times they were used medicinally in Europe and still appear in the materia medica of China. According to one Chinese authority, au-thority, a, pearl, after being treated with pumice stone and honeycomb, mixed with the gall of a serpent, "might be drawn out to the length of three or four feet. Make it into pills and swallow them henceforth food will be unnecessary," The suggestion Is not that the patient would be finished fin-ished off, but that he would live, food-less, food-less, forever. |