Friar Odoric (Google Books ⧉, Amazon ⧉, Bookshop ⧉)

The Travels of Marco Polo

Note 3.—Like devices to procure invulnerability are common in the Indo‐Chinese countries. The Burmese sometimes insert pellets of gold under the skin with this view. At a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1868, gold and silver coins were shown, which had been extracted from under the skin of a Burmese convict... Friar Odoric speaks of the practice in one of the Indian Islands (apparently Borneo); and the stones possessing such virtue were, according to him, found in the bamboo, presumably the siliceous concretions called Tabashir.