Fisherman in Yemen haul in a dead sperm whale and discover, inside it, ambergris worth $1.5 million.

 

On the topic of ambergris, there is this from Herman Melville's "Moby Dick":

Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.

I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors' trousers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing, more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner. Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.

But what, you may ask, are Brandreth's pills? Wikipedia answers: 

Brandreth was a pioneer in using the then-infant technique of mass advertising in building brand awareness to create a mass market for his product.

The first syllable of his name was "brand" and he was a pioneer in "branding." Is this that "implicit egotism" I've heard about — you know, like the way a guy named Dennis becomes a dentist? Yes, I could digress for a chapter, a la Melville in "Moby Dick," but let's barrel on and find out about the pills.

Brandreth created and published a wide variety of advertising material for his pills, including a 224-page tome entitled The Doctrine of Purgation, Curiosities from Ancient and Modern Literature, from Hippocrates and Other Medical Writers.

It's a purgative, which is why, if you give boatloads of the stuff to a whale, you must make a quick getaway like a laborer blasting rocks.

His advertising copy had a distinctly literary flavor which found favor with the public. Brandreth widely distributed his books and pamphlets throughout the country as well as taking copious advertising space in newspapers. Eventually his pills became one of the best selling patent medicines in the United States. "…A congressional committee in 1849 reported that Brandreth was the nation's largest proprietary advertiser… Between 1862 and 1863 Brandreth's average annual gross income surpassed $600,000…" For fifty years Brandreth's name was a household word in the United States.

Indeed, the Brandreth pills were so well known they received mention in Edgar Allan Poe's satirical story "Some Words with a Mummy" Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick, and P. T. Barnum's book The Humbugs of the World.... 

From "Some Words with a Mummy": 

... the Doctor, approaching the Mummy with great dignity, desired it to say candidly, upon its honor as a gentleman, if the Egyptians had comprehended, at any period, the manufacture of either Ponnonner's lozenges or Brandreth's pills.

We looked, with profound anxiety, for an answer -- but in vain. It was not forthcoming. The Egyptian blushed and hung down his head. Never was triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace. Indeed, I could not endure the spectacle of the poor Mummy's mortification. I reached my hat, bowed to him stiffly, and took leave....

And here's P.T. Barnum's chapter on Brandreth's pills. Excerpt: 

Column upon column of advertisements appeared in the newspapers, in the shape of learned and scientific pathological dissertations, the very reading of which would tempt a poor mortal to rush for a box of Brandreth’s Pills; so evident was it (according to the advertisement) that nobody ever had or ever would have “pure blood,” until from one to a dozen boxes of the pills had been taken as “purifiers.” The ingenuity displayed in concocting these advertisements was superb, and was probably hardly equaled by that required to concoct the pills…. No pain, ache, twinge, or other sensation, good, bad, or indifferent, ever experienced by a member of the human family, but was a most irrefragable evidence of the impurity of the blood; and it would have been blasphemy to have denied the “self-evident” theory, that “all diseases arise from impurity or imperfect circulation of the blood, and that by purgation with Brandreth’s Pills all disease may be cured.”

Irrefragable! 

ADDED: All that about Brandreth's Pills, but what of Melville's reference to St. Paul? 

Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory.

Here we are: 1 Corinthian's 15:

But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body... It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.... 

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?