(33). Item, Aëtites, Lapis Aquilaris, or the eagle stone, which I bought of an Armenian at Rome. They differ sometimes in colour. This is a kind of a rough, dark, sandy colour, and about the bigness of a good wallnut. It is rare, and of good value, because of its excellent qualities and use, which is, by applying it to childbearing women, and to keep them from miscarriages.[*] Some directions for the use of the stone are here omitted. . . . . It is so useful that my wife can seldom keep it at home, and therefore she hath sewed the strings to the knitt purse in which the stone is, for the convenience of the tying of it to the patient on occasion; and hath a box she hath, to put the purse and stone in. It were fitt that either the dean’s or vice-dean’s wife (if they be marryed men) should have this stone in their custody for the public good as to neighbourhood; but still, that they have a great care into whose hand it be committed, and that the midwives have a care of it, so that it still be the Cathedral Church’s stone.