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
