Jade has been called the concentrated essence of love. The French literary legend Voltaire, author of Candide, was involved in a kidney-stone scandal caused by the innocent generosity of a Mademoiselle Paulet, who gave Voltaire a lovely jade bracelet. She wanted him to be cured in the same way she had, but French society thought it was a token of love, and his reputation was irrevocably damaged.
I always thought jade was a word of Asian origin until I learned better. It comes from the Spanish word piedra de hijada, translating to “stone of the flank,” a name prompted by the Indian use of jade as a cure for kidney disease. Jade also served as an aid to ancient midwives and birth mothers, and on the opposite end of the spectrum of life, the Egyptians, Chinese, and Mayans placed a small piece of jade into the mouths of the dead.
The erudite world-exploring nobleman Sir Walter Raleigh wrote this about jade: “These Amazones have likewise great stores of these plates of gold, which they recover in exchange, chiefly for a kind of greene stone, which the Spaniards call Piedra Hijada, and we use for spleene stones and for the disease of the stone we also esteem them. Of these I saw divers in Guiana, and commonly every King or Casique had one, which theire wife for the most part weare, and the esteeme them as great jewels.”
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