18 92. J NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 151 



On motion, the report of the Committee was accepted and ordered 

 printed in the Transactions of the Society. 



Wm. T. Belfield, Frank Billings, 



President. Secretary. 



Sillimaii's American Journal of Science and Arts was published quar- 

 terly, on the first of April and July, and the first of October and January. 

 The April and July numbers were bound as one volume, and the October and 

 January numbers as another. 0. G. 



Historical Notes on the Gold-cure. 



BY H. CARRINGTON BOLTON. 



Avoiding all discussion of the merits or demerits of the so-called 

 bichloride of gold cure, now so prominent in the public 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 chem- 

 istry and medicine to indicate the opinions held with respect to alleged 

 " tinctures of gold" at diSerent 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 language of 

 the distinguished Dutch physician and chemist, Herrman Boer- 

 haave ; 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 assuaging remedy in 

 the blood of an ass's ear by reason the ass is a very calm beast." 

 (Shaw's transl. Boerhaave's Chemistry, London, 1T27, p. 71.) 



Something of this sympathetica! and mental effect was evidently 

 sought to be attained in the very first instance of the administration 

 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 marvellous compilation " Natural History," written 

 about 70 A. D., has a paragraph on the " medicinable virtues of gold," 

 which in "divers waies is effectuall in the cure of many diseases. 

 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 foule tettar that appeareth 



