AURUM POTABILE, potable gold, is a composition made of gold, by reducing it, without any corrosive, into a gum, or substance like honey, of the colour of blood; which gum steeped in spirit of wine, acquires a ruby-colour, and is called tincture of gold.
An ounce of this tincture, mix’d with sixteen ounces of another liquor is call’d aurum potabile, because of its gold-colour; and is said to be a sovereign remedy against several diseases. See POTABLE GOLD.
A modern physician has asserted that gold is a resin drawn from the earth; and that the grand secret of rendering gold potable, does not consist in dissolving this resin by means of corrosives, but by a water, wherein it melts like ice or snow in hot water; and this water must be nothing but a water extracted from gold, agreeable to an axiom that he lays down, which is, that matters of different natures have no ingress into one another; but that every menstruum or dissolvent ought to be taken from bodies of the same kind with those it is to act upon.
The same author observes, that blood and urine furnish a sal ammoniac, which mingled with aqua-fortis, acts upon gold: whence he conjectures, that there may be a conformity of nature between gold and blood and that by consequence, gold well opened and subtilized, might produce a resin, and a fire that would augment the blood.
AURUM POTABILE
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- Written by: Ephraïm Chambers
- Category: Unclassified