First of all, what in the world is a mad stone? Smooth, odd-shaped, unusually colored, of almost any size, mad stones are miraculous objects possessing healing powers. They are actually bezoars, hairball-like concretions found in the stomachs of animals such as deer and goats. Formed from the accumulation of indigestible materials, such as mineral salts along with hair, fibers, and plant matter, which gather and compact over time in the stomach, bezoars are like oyster-formed pearls. The rarer the animal the bezoar is found in, the greater its power is thought to be. Best to get one from an albino deer, if possible.

Why might you want one in your first aid kit? Bezoars, from the Persian word for “antidote” have been associated with healing for over a thousand years. Medical literature from 11^th century Persia and Andalusia described neutralizing poisons with bezoars. Bezoars were commonly used in the 15-16^th century Europe to counteract poisons, such as snake bites. They were precious objects, sometimes stored in gold filigreed boxes, and were highly sought after.

Bezoars came to be called mad stones because of their association with Rabies. A scourge through the centuries, widely feared and uniformly fatal, Rabies was known to confer madness prior to the inevitable death that followed. Carried by dogs, wolves, bats, and raccoons, it was endemic across the globe. It was believed to be particularly prevalent in late summer, especially in the so-called Dog Days (July 24–August 24), when the dog star Sirius rises in the sky around the same time as sunrise. Victims began to develop symptoms days or weeks after the rabid bite, and invariably had shaking, nightmares, frothing at the mouth, fear of drinking liquids, seizures, and a painful lingering death. Although the actual number of Rabies deaths was modest, its shadow loomed large, and it was widely feared, due to the ghastly way the victims died. In some cultures, once symptoms began, the family and neighbors would cover the victim with a blanket and all lie on him to suffocate him, to spare the coming suffering.

Prior to Louis Pasteur’s miraculous development of a Rabies vaccine in 1884, there were very few cures. Standard treatment included the application of the key of St Hubert (the patron saint of hunters), an iron cross, heated in a fire and used to brand the site of the animal bite. Perhaps this worked; application of cautery soon after a bite could kill the virus before it had a chance to spread. Some people had faith in a cure which involved repeatedly pressing hair from the rabid animal into the wound. This came to be known as “the hair of the dog that bit you”. But by far the most popular treatment was mad stone treatment.

Now, there were particular and unbreakable rules about mad stone use.

• Crucially, the mad stone could not come to you; you had to go to the mad stone. So, if you were an explorer or a farmer in 1700s Europe, or a pioneer in the 1840’s American west, it was important to already know the location of the nearest mad stone.
• Mad stones could not be bought or sold; they were typically passed down from father to son.
• Mad stones could not be used on animals, or they would lose their power.
• Once you arrived at the mad stone owner’s house, you could not be charged for treatment; that would negate the power of the stone.
• The wound must still be bleeding. If not, it must be scraped until it begins to bleed.
• The stone, soaked in milk, must be applied to the wound and allowed to stay there until it naturally fell off (even if it took hours), then boiled in milk to remove the poison. It was then reapplied until it fell off, and so on, until it did not stick at all.

There are many reports of successful mad stone treatments in newspapers of the 1800s in America. One of these was Abraham Lincoln, who in 1852, traveled with his son Robert Todd from Springfield, Illinois, 140 miles to Terre Haute, Indiana, after Robert had been bitten by a dog. The treatment was successful; Robert lived to the ripe old age of eighty-two. Of course there were reports of failures as well. The National Institutes of Health tells us that the risk of infection after an exposure to a rabid animal is about 15%, but it varies depending on factors such as the number and depth of the bites and the stage of illness of the animal. So, we can see why mad stones were so “successful” so much of the time.

At any rate, once there was a real vaccine against Rabies, the popularity of mad stones plummeted. Now, they exist only as curiosities, and reminders of an earlier, scarier time.

So, no, you don’t need to keep a mad stone in your first aid kit.