Introduction
In his Materia Medica Pura, if we turn up Hahnemann’s Preface to METALLIC GOLD, we find an account of its checkered medical history–How it was esteemed by the Arabian physicians and the ancients. How it was scorned, condemned and rejected, because of its insolubility and its indestructibility, by the Schools *In our day Old School medicine, having discovered colloidal gold, uses it–for a blood-test in syphilis: also in the form of Sanocrysin, a thiosulphate of gold and sodium, which “may be used in the case of patients” (with pulmonary phthisis) “who have not responded well to other forms of treatment”. It is given intravenously, the dose “according to the weight of the patient and the character of the lesions”. (Taylor’s Practice of Medicine, 1930. ED.) In the older text-books no mention is made of Gold!
But even so it is not given with Hahnemann’s precision and fore- knowledge, in answer to the cry of symptoms, to raise the resistance of the patient and to evoke curative reaction, but merely with the idea of destroying the tubercle bacilli–the dose according to the weight of the patient, and the character of the lesions! Medicine has a long way to go yet, to catch up with Hahnemann! which put a higher store on reasoning than on experiment–sole arbiter in such matters. How it was revealed in its mighty power for good and evil by Hahnemann’s methods of trituration, potentization and provings. How he began, following precedents, with low triturations and later got his best results from the higher potencies.
Some of us could tell tale after tale of patients, in these days of world-wide commercial depression, who, reduced to despair by straightened means and anxiety, threatened suicide, and yet were rapidly restored to life, to hope, to renewed effort by a few doses of homoeopathic gold. We say “homoeopathic gold” because gold when tested on normal healthy persons has produced just such states of suicidal despair and hopelessness; and again, because by its reduction to infinitesimals the noble metal, thrice noble in these its higher uses, emerges from bulk, weight, visibility and inertness, as a mighty energy to strengthen the will and revive the natural affections–even to the deepest and most fundamental of all–LOVE OF LIFE.
These are some of the mental symptoms elicited by Hahnemann when he tested the powers of GOLD–to hurt, and therefore to heal.
Dejected and full of grief: seeks solitude. Imagines he has lost the affection of friends.
Dissatisfied with everything: imagines he sees obstacles everywhere; partly his own fault, partly occasioned by a contrary fate.
Melancholy: imagines he is not fit for this world: longs for death: the thought of death gives him intense joy.
Great anguish, increasing to self-destruction.
Quarrelsome–peevish–vehement: can’t stand the least contradiction. Rash anger and vehemence. And so on
Great anguish about the heart.
When BURNETT, after his manner, made a short proving of Gold upon himself “because, to get a concrete conception of what a given drug can do there is nothing like trying it on your own body,” its first effects were “excitant and exhilarating” (Hahnemann has this in black type. “All day long good humour, talkative and contented with himself–alternating action?”) But in a few days Burnett found himself “not up to the mark; very depressed and low-spirited; nothing seems worth while!” He was having bad nights too, dreaming of death–of the dead–of corpses becoming very bad, he abandoned his provings- “fearing the effects in this direction might be serious”. Three or four weeks later.”memory was already getting good again”. But having taken one grain and six-tenths of triturated gold in twelve days, he says, “I am thoroughly satisfied that it can make me ill. My allopathic brethren maintain that GOLD is inert! Sure proof that they have never tried it, properly triturated, on their own bodies”
These are some of the things that Burnett has to tell us about GOLD, in his brilliant little monograph GOLD AS A REMEDY IN DISEASE.
“In the treatment of some heart diseases, some bone diseases, and of sarcocele, to know the medicinal value of GOLD or to ignore it, is just the important difference between curing and failing. But of course, the metal must be first-triturated, so that it may become remedial.”
“The glands, bones, skin, and nose are alike stricken with scrofula, syphilis, and Gold.”
“Gold has an important place in the treatment of heart affections of the gravest kinds.”
“Gold in angina pectoris. With me it is, next to Arnica (a grand cardiac!) the most frequently prescribed, and it has rendered me important services.”
“No wonder Hahnemann should exclaim:`Gold possesses great healing properties, the place of which no other remedy can supply.”
“Gold is no mere function disturber, but a producer of organic change, and hence its brilliant effects in organic mischief. The vascular turgescence of Belladonna and that of Aurum are very different affairs.”
He quotes Hahnemann, “I have cured several cases of Melancholy, similar to those of Gold, promptly and permanently, and they were those of such who went about with the serious intention of committing suicide”
Burnett used Gold inter alia for the “non-thriving, pining condition of boys–low-spirited, lifeless, memories bad; lacking in boyish go”.
NASH says, “I once cured a young lady who tried to commit suicide by drowning” (with Aurum). “After she was cured she laughed at the occurrence, and said she could not help it. It seemed to her she was no use in the world. She felt so.”
(One remembers a man, deeply depressed and hopeless, in the out- patient department, years ago. Aurum was prescribed. And as he went out, “You will come and see me in a month’s time?” “I shall not be alive!” But he did come, and he said, “I have forgotten all that nonsense!”)
Gold is a great remedy for over dosing with mercury in the treatment of venereal disease. Nash says, “There would be a great falling off of business for physicians if the old school could learn to cure their patients without poisoning them with drugs”.
He says, “Aurum is one of our best remedies for bone pains. Never forget it”.
And now let KENT, that great prescriber and vivid writer, take up the tale.
“In Aurum all the affections, natural to healthy man, are perverted. So great in extent is this that one of the fundamental loves, which is the love of living, of self-protection, is perverted, and he loathes life, is weary of life, longs to die and seeks methods to commit suicide. Absolute loss of enjoyment in everything. Self-condemnation, continual self-reproach, self- criticism, a constant looking into self; she does nothing right, everything is wrong, nothing will succeed, hopelessness. Has neglected something–neglected his friends. He is wrong, is wholly evil, has sinned away his day of grace, is not worthy of salvation–this is the train of thought that runs constantly through his mind.Broods. is wholly unfit for this world, and then he longs to die.
“Now what are the causes of this state of insanity, grief and hopelessness? Prolonged anxiety and unusual responsibility. Syphilis is a common one: loss of property is another. Persons who in their young days have been repeatedly drugged with Mercury and were always taking `Blue Mass’ in the Spring, as good for the liver, have established upon themselves a mercurial disease, with the enlargement of the liver, and this is almost always attended more or less by melancholy and sadness, and such hopelessness as we find in Aurum. Aurum produces such affections of the liver as are associated with cardiac affections, endocarditis, dropsy of the heart, and rheumatic affections that have gone to the heart.”
“Notice the peculiar relation between the lungs and the understanding, and between the heart and the will. With every little trouble located in the heart there comes hopelessness, but when the manifestation of disease is in the lungs there is hopefulness. Heart and liver affections are associated with hopelessness and despair.
“In this remedy the pains wander from joint to joint and finally locate in the heart. Angina pectoris is often the ending of an old rheumatism that has wandered from joint to joint.”
“The remedy is full of rheumatic affections–with swelling of joints: affections of cartilages and bones, inflammations of periosteum, thickening and induration of periosteum. Like syphilis and mercury, the complaints are aggravated at night
Aurum affects and cures diseases of bones; especially those of the nose and skull. It is curative of disease-conditions of eyes and nose. One remembers the astonishing curative effect of gold in a small child, with ulceration in nostrils and horrible nasal discharge, where Sulphur had failed. As Kent says, “Aurum is full of nasal troubles with foetid discharges. The bones of the nose necrose (like syphilis and mercury). But with all these complaints the patient is bowed down with sorrow; full of grief; wants to die; everything is black.”
