consented to read to the Academy an essay on Aurum Potabile. 

 On that occasion the assembly hall was crowded with mem- 

 bers and their friends eager to see and to hear the dis- 

 tinguished speaker; in introducing him Dr. Guarinonius re- 

 minded the Academy that Dr. Libau never allowed his official 

 duties as Director of the Gymnasium at Coburg to interfere 

 with his scientific pursuits, and that he had recently published 

 a folio volume entitled "Alchymia" that was destined to 

 immortalize him in the annals of medicine and of chemistry. 

 His earlier treatises on the " Testing of Mineral Waters" and 

 on "Assaying Ores" are of course well known, and he now 

 honors the Academy by an original essay on Potable Gold. 



Doctor Libau, whose Latinized name "Libavius" is more 

 familiar, began the address by remarking that gold is not 

 capable of being destroyed and possesses inestimable qualities 

 that adapt it to restoring health and prolonging life, and 

 the problem to which he had given attention was to discover 

 the best form in which to administer it. The authority of 

 a,ntiquity endorses gold for medicinal use ; one of the earliest 

 records being found in the Holy Scriptures : "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." Pliny in his 

 Natural History extols the medicinal virtues of gold, and re- 

 commends its outward application as a cure for green wounds 

 in form of a liniment ; prepared with honey, it gently loosens 

 the belly if the navel be anointed therewith ; if the skin be 

 stroked with a gold ring warts will fall off. The Arabian 

 physicians also recorded the virtues of gold as a remedy for 

 diseases; the eminent chemist Geber wrote 'Gold is a medicine 

 rejoycing the heart and conserving the body in youth.' 



The full benefit of this metal as a medicine can, however, 

 be realized only when in a potable, innocuous solution, and 



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