HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE GOLD-CURE. 469 

 HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE GOLD-CURE.* 



By Prof. H. CAERINGTON BOLTON. 



AVOIDING all discussion of the merits or demerits of the so- 

 called bichloride-of-gold cure, now so prominent in the pub- 

 lic mind, we propose to show that the use of gold as a medicine is 

 not so novel as commonly thought ; and by extracts from early 

 writers on chemistry and medicine to indicate the opinions held 

 with respect to alleged " tinctures of gold " at different periods 

 during several centuries. 



The precious metal has been employed both externally and in- 

 ternally, in the metallic state, in solution, and by sympathy, for a 

 great variety of the ills that flesh is heir to, for over two thousand 

 years. The train of thought which led the ancients to employ 

 this highly prized material can be well told in the quaint lan- 

 guage of the distinguished Dutch physician and chemist, Her- 

 mann Boerhaave ; writing about 1725, he says : " The alchemists 

 will have this metal contain I know not what radical balm of life 

 capable of restoring health and continuing it to the longest period. 

 What led the early physicians to imagine such wonderful virtue 

 in gold was that they perceived certain qualities therein which 

 they fancied must be conveyed thereby into the body ; gold, for 

 instance, is not capable of being destroyed, hence they concluded 

 it must be very proper to preserve animal substances and save 

 them from putrefaction; which is a method of reasoning very 

 much like that of some fanciful physicians who sought for an as- 

 suaging remedy in the blood of an ass's ear by reason the ass is a 

 very calm beast ! " (Shaw's translation, Boerhaave's Chemistry, 

 London, 1727.) 



Something of this sympathetical and mental effect was evi- 

 dently sought to be attained in the very first instance of the ad- 

 ministration of gold recorded in history. " And Moses took the 

 (golden) calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and 

 ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the 

 children of Israel drink of it." (Exodus, xxxii, 20.) 



Pliny, in his marvelous compilation, " Natural History," writ- 

 ten about 70 a. d., has a paragraph on the " medicinable virtues of 

 gold " which in " divers waies is effectual in the cure of many dis- 

 eases. For first of all sovereign it is for green wounds, if it be 

 outwardly applied." Pliny describes a form of liniment of gold 

 " torrefied with salt and schistis " which " healeth the f oule tettar 

 that appeareth in the face," fistulas, etc. And he alludes to a prep- 

 aration of gold in honey which " doth gently loose the belly if 



* Read, in part, to the New York Academy of Sciences, June 6, 1892. 



