HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE GOLD-CURE. 473 



This is quoted by Glauber from Conrad Khunrath in his Medulla 

 destillatoria, and he adds : " I some time since administered this 

 Oil of gold for eight or ten days successively to an Infant for the 

 freeing his body from mercury." (Glauber's Works, Packe's 

 translation, London, 1G89.) 



Robert Boyle, in his Usefulness of Natural Experimental Phi- 

 losophy (1663), expresses doubts as to the "strange excellency" of 

 aurum potabile, remarking that " learned physicians and chym- 

 ists have pronounced the preparation of potable gold as itself un- 

 feasible." And he adds : " I should much doubt whether such a 

 potable gold would have the prodigious virtues its encomiasts 

 ascribe to it and expect from it ; for I finde not that those I have 

 yet met with deliver these strange things upon particular experi- 

 ments duly made, but partly upon the authority of chymicall 

 books, many of which were never written by those whose names 

 they bear." He then proceeds to blame physicians for using ex- 

 pensive medicines and says : " T'were a good work to substitute 

 cheap ones for the poorer sort of patients." 



The change of opinion as respects the therapeutic value of 

 gold, foreshadowed in the quotation from the astute Boyle, is well 

 shown by comparing the passages on the subject in two different 

 editions of Lernery's Cours de Chymie, one published in 1680 and 

 one in 1730. In the earlier edition of Ldmery's very successful 

 work we read : " Gold is a good remedy for those that have taken 

 too much mercury, for these two metals do easily unite together, 

 and by this union or amalgamation the mercury fixes and its 

 motion is interrupted." (Page 25.) " Aurum fulminans causes 

 sweat and drives out ill humors by transpiration. It may be 

 given in the small pox two to six grains in a lozenge or electuary. 

 It stops vomiting and is also good to moderate the active motion 

 of mercury." (Harris's translation, London, 1680, page 9.) 



And in the later edition, the eleventh of the series, Lemery or 

 his editor makes a very different statement : 



" Potable gold, so much praised by the alchemists, and sold so 

 dear by them, is commonly only a vegetable or mineral tincture 

 of a color resembling gold, and as they make this tincture with 

 a spirituous menstruum, it sometimes excites perspiration. This 

 effect they ascribe to the gold, although the metal has rarely any- 

 thing to do with it." (1730.) 



In the works of Caspar Neumann a passage occurs that ex- 

 presses so clearly the present views of many that it is hard to 

 realize it was written nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. 

 Neumann writes : 



" Gold has been imagined to be possessed of extraordinary 

 medicinal virtues, and many preparations, dignified with the 

 name of this precious metal, have been imposed upon the public ; 



