# Eagle-stone

**Aetites**

**Known today as.** A hollow nodule of iron oxide with a loose stone rattling inside.

Kind: Mineral

## What was it used for?

An amulet of childbirth: worn on the arm to keep the child in the womb, bound to the thigh to bring it out.

## What does modern science say?

No effect; a mineral curiosity.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **iron oxide and clay**: a hollow geode of limonite or clay-ironstone
- **a loose core**: which rattles

**Mechanism.** A hollow iron concretion with a loose nucleus, a stone within a stone, which by resemblance kept the child in the womb or brought it out; worn on the arm it delivers nothing, and the rattle is the whole of its physics. Still sold in the nineteenth century for lying-in.

**Dose.** Inert.

**Standing.** A curiosity of the cabinet.

## What lore surrounds it?

It was lent from woman to woman and passed down in families into the seventeenth century.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Says eagles carry it to their nests, and that it holds another stone within it as a womb holds a child.

## Sources

- Pliny, *Natural History* XXXVI.
- Forbes, T. R. (1966). *The Midwife and the Witch*. Yale University Press, ch. 5.

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*Eagle-stone.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-09-25. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/eagle-stone

Historical description, not medical advice.