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.