GOLD.
For gold in physick is a cordiall,
Therefore he loved gold in special.
Chaucer’s Doctour of Phisike.
The employment of gold as a remedy is but rarely mentioned in ancient medical literature. Gold leaf was probably used by the Egyptians to cover abrasions of the skin. Pieces of it have been found on mummies apparently so applied. Some of the Arab alchemists, Geber among them, are believed to have made some kind of elixir of life from gold, but their writings are too enigmatical to be trusted. Avicenna mentions gold among blood purifiers, and the gilding of pills originated with the Eastern pharmacists. Probably it was believed that the gold added to the efficacy of the pills. It was not, however, until the period of chemical medicine in Europe that gold attained its special fame.
Arnold of Villa Nova, and Raymond Lully were among the advocates of the medicinal virtues of gold; but in the century before Paracelsus appeared, Brassavolus, Fallopius, and other writers questioned its virtues. With Paracelsus, Quercetanus, Libavius, Crollius, and others of that age, however, gold entered fully into its kingdom. They could hardly exalt it too highly. But it is difficult to ascertain from the writings of this period what the chemical physicians understood by gold.
Paracelsus says it needs much preparation before it can be administered. To make their aurum potabile some of the alchemists professed to separate the salt from the fixed sulphur, which they held was the real principle of gold, its seed, as some of them called it, and to obtain this in such a form that it could be taken in any liquor. The seed of gold was with many of them the universal medicine which would cure all diseases, and prolong life indefinitely. It was the sulphur of the sun with which that body revivifies nature.
Paracelsus prescribed gold for purifying blood, and intimates that it is useful as an antidote in cases of poisoning, and will prevent miscarriages in women. He considered it not so cordial as emeralds, but more so than silver. He also states that if put into the mouth of a newly-born babe it will prevent the devil from acquiring power over the child.
The Archidoxa Medicinæ of Paracelsus, his famous Elixir of Long Life, is believed to have been a compound of gold and corrosive sublimate. He recommended gold especially in diseases connected with the heart, the organ which the sun was supposed to rule. Among the earlier Paracelsians Angelo Sala wrote a treatise on gold, entitled “Chrysologia, seu Examen Auri Chymicum,” Hamburg, 1622. Sachsens prepared a Tinctura Solis secundem secretiorem Paracelsi Mentem preparata. But Thurneyssen, who carried on his quackeries on the largest scale, did the most to push the gold business. His Magistery of the Sun attained to great popularity in Germany, and these and his other preparations, together with the astrological almanacks and talismans which he sold, enabled him to live in great splendour at Frankfort, where he is said to have employed 200 persons in his laboratory. His fame departed, however, and he died in poverty at Cologne, in 1595.
Aurum Potabile.
Roger Bacon is said to have held that potable gold was the true elixir of life. He told Pope Nicholas IV that an old man in Sicily, ploughing, found one day a golden phial containing a yellow liquid. He thought it was dew, drank in off, and was immediately transformed into a hale, robust, handsome, and highly accomplished youth. He entered into the service of the King of Sicily, and remained at court for the next eighty years.
Francis Anthony was a famous quack in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. The College of Physicians took proceedings against him several times, fined him and imprisoned him, but aristocratic influences were exerted on his behalf and ultimately the College found it prudent to let him alone. His panacea “Aurum potabile” professed to be a solution of gold, and the wealthy classes of the period had unbounded belief in its wonderful remedial virtues. Some years after the death of Anthony the famous Honourable Robert Boyle (the “Father of philosophy and brother of the Earl of Cork”) in the “Sceptical Chymist” wrote that though he was prejudiced against all such compositions, he had known (and he describes) some such wonderful cures resulting from this aurum potabile that he was compelled to bear testimony to its efficacy. Boyle also states that he had seen in part the preparation of this nostrum. He rather enigmatically reports that there was but a single ingredient associated with the gold, that this came from above, and was reputed to be one of the simplest substances in nature.
Anthony claimed that his product would cure most diseases; vomitings, fluxes, stoppages, fevers, plague, and palsies were included among the evils which it overcame. Several of the well-known physicians of the time wrote angry pamphlets denouncing Anthony’s pretensions. Dr. Matthew Gwynne’s “Aurum non aurum,” and Dr. Cotta’s “Cotta contra Antonium” were two of the most noted. Of course these gave Anthony opportunities of reply, and largely promoted the business. In one of his later publications Anthony boldly offered to exhibit his process to a committee of proper and unbiassed witnesses with the object of proving that the compound was truly a solution of gold. The challenge appears to have been accepted, and the Master of the Mint, Baron Thomas Knivet, and other experts were present when the test was made. According to Gwynne the result was failure, but I do not find any unprejudiced report of the experiment.
The writer of the life of Anthony in the old “Biographia Britannica,” who is his warm partisan, gives what he declares to have been the genuine formula for the aurum potabile. It had long been in the possession of Anthony’s descendants, he says, and was given to him (the author of the biography) by an eminent chemist. If this is true it is evident that a solution of gold would not have resulted from the process.
This is what the alleged Anthony’s manuscript prescribes:—The object, Anthony says, is to so far open the gold that its sulphur may become active. To open it a liquor and a salt are required, these together forming the menstruum. The liquor was 3 pints of red wine vinegar distilled from a gallon; the salt was block tin burnt to ashes in an iron pan; these to be mixed and distilled again and again. Take one ounce of filed gold, and heat it in a crucible with white salt; take it out and grind the mixture; heat again; wash with water until no taste of salt is left; mix this with the menstruum, one ounce to the pint, digest, and evaporate to the consistence of honey. The Aurum Potabile was made by dissolving this in spirit of wine.
Whatever may have been the opinion of the experts who watched Anthony make his Aurum Potabile, the sale of the panacea was not destroyed, perhaps not injured by the result. Anthony made a handsome fortune out of it and continued to sell it largely until his death in 1623, and according to the authority already quoted, his son John Anthony, who qualified as an M.D. and held the licence of the College, derived a considerable income from the sale of the remedy. Dr. Munk, however, in the “Roll of the College of Physicians” intimates that this gentleman was free from the hereditary stain. “He succeeded to the more reputable part of his father’s practice,” is the pleasant way in which Dr. Munk describes John Anthony, M.D. John, however, wrote the following epitaph on his father:
Though poisonous Envy ever sought to blame
Or hide the fruits of thy Intention;
Yet shall all they commend that high design
Of purest gold to make a Medicine
That feel thy Help by that thy rare Invention.
Glauber (1650) expounds “the true method of making Aurum Potabile,” knowledge of which, he says, was bestowed on him from the highest. “Haply there will be some,” he remarks at the beginning of his treatise on this subject, who will deny “that gold is the Son of the Sun, or a metallic body, fixed and perfect, proceeding from the rays of the Sun; asking how the Solary immaterial rays can be made material and corporeal?” But this only shows how ignorant they are of the generation of metals and minerals. Disposing of such incredulity by a few comments, and referring the sceptics to his treatise De Generatione Metallorum, he deals with several other irrelevant matters, and at last describes his process in prolix and unintelligible terms.
“℞ of living gold one part, and three parts of quick mercury, not of the vulgar, but the philosophical everywhere to be found without charges or labour.” He recommends, but not as essential, the addition to the gold of an equal part of silver. “The mixture of male and female will yield a greater variety of colours, and who knoweth the power of the cordial union of gold and silver?” These metals being mixed in a philosophical vessel will be dissolved by the mercury in a quarter of an hour, acquiring a purple colour. Heating for half an hour, this will be changed to a green. The compound is to be dissolved in water of dew, the solution filtered and abstracted in a glass alembic three times until the greenness turns to a black like ink, “stinking like a carcase.” After standing for forty hours the blackness and stink will depart, leaving a milky white solution. This is to be dried to a white mass, which will change into divers colours, ultimately becoming a finer green than formerly. That green gold is to be dissolved in spirit of wine, to which it will impart a quintessence, red as blood, which is the quickening tincture, a superfluous ashy body being left. After some more distillations and abstractions a strong red solution will be obtained which is capable of being diluted with any liquid and may be kept as a panacea for the most desperate diseases. Next to “the stone” this is the best of all medicines.
The author cautions his readers against the yellow or red waters sold by distillers of wine at a great price as potable gold. Further he explains that the solution of gold made with aqua regia or spirit of salt is of little or no medicinal value, because the Archeus cannot digest it, but can only separate the gold and discharge it in the excrements.
In the “Secrets of Alexis” (John Wight’s translation) a recipe for a potable liquor of gold is given which “conserveth the youth and health of man, and will heal every disease that is thought incurable in the space of seven doses at the furthest.” Gold leaf, lemon juice, honey, common salt, and spirit of wine were to be frequently distilled. “The oftener it is distilled the better it be.”
Kenelm Digby made a tincture of gold thus:—Gold calcined with three salts and ground with flowers of sulphur; burnt in a reverberatory furnace twelve times, and then digested with spirit of wine.
Lemery gives a formula for potable gold, or tincture of gold, or diaphoretic sulphur of gold:—Dissolve any quantity of gold you like in aqua regia; evaporate to dryness, and make a paste of the residue with essence of cannella. Then digest it in spirit. He adds, sarcastically I suppose, “This tincture is a good cordial because of the essence of cannella and the spirit of wine.”
About 1540 Antoine Lecoque, a physician of Paris, acquired considerable reputation for his cures of syphilis by gold. Fallopius, Hoffmann, and Dr. Pitcairn, of Edinburgh, more or less fully adopted his treatment, but the theory gradually dropped out of medical practice. It was revived early in the nineteenth century by Dr. Chrestien, of Montpellier, a physician of considerable reputation, and his ardent advocacy had for a time considerable effect. But subsequent trials in the French hospitals gave negative results.
There were, no doubt, many honest attempts to make aurum potabile, and certainly there were a multitude of frauds palmed off on to a public who had come to believe in the miraculous remedial powers of the precious metal. The following is one of the simplest formulas for extracting the virtue of gold. It is given in “Lewis’s Dispensatory,” 1785, but not with any suggestion of its medicinal value:—One drachm of fine gold was dissolved in 2 ounces of aqua regia. To the solution 1 ounce of essential oil of rosemary was added, and the mixture well shaken. The yellow colour of the acid solution was transferred to the oil, which was decanted off, and diluted with 5 ounces of spirit of wine. The mixture was digested for a month, and then acquired a purple colour. Lewis explains that the oil takes up some of the gold, which, however, is deposited on the sides of the glass, or floats on the surface in the form of a slight film.
Aurum Fulminans
was described in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, and later by Oswald Crollius. It is sometimes termed Volatile Gold. Valentine explains very clearly the process of making it, that is, by dissolving gold leaf in aqua regia and precipitating the fulminating gold by salt of tartar. By treatment with vinegar or sulphur its explosive properties were to be reduced. It was supposed to possess the medicinal value of gold in a special degree, and was particularly recommended as a diaphoretic. It appears from reports that it occasioned violent diarrhœas, and was, no doubt, often fatal. The so-called Mosaic Gold, which was given as a remedy for convulsions in children, was an amalgam of mercury with tin, ground with sulphur and sal ammoniac.
Hahnemann insisted that gold had great curative powers, and several homœopathic physicians of our time have highly extolled it. Dr. J. C. Burnett, in “Gold as a Remedy,” recommended triturations of gold leaf, one in a million, as a marvellous heart tonic, especially in cases of difficult breathing in old age.