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 the skin. Pieces of it have been found on mummies apparently so applied. Some of the Arab alchemists, Geber among them, are believed to have made some kind of elixir of life from gold, but their writings are too enigmatical to be trusted. Avicenna mentions gold among blood purifiers, and the gilding of pills originated with the Eastern pharmacists. Probably it was believed that the gold added to the efficacy of the pills. It was not, however, until the period of chemical medicine in Europe that gold attained its special fame.

Arnold of Villa Nova, and Raymond Lully were among the advocates of the medicinal virtues of gold; but in the century before Paracelsus appeared, Brassavolus, Fallopius, and other writers questioned its virtues. With Paracelsus, Quercetanus, Libavius, Crollius, and others of that age, however, gold entered fully into its kingdom. They could hardly exalt it too highly. But it is difficult to ascertain from the writings of this period what the chemical physicians understood by gold.

Paracelsus says it needs much preparation before it can be administered. To make their aurum potabile some of the alchemists professed to separate the salt from the fixed sulphur, which they held was the real principle of gold, its seed, as some of them called it, and to obtain this in such a form that it could be taken in any liquor. The seed of gold was with many of them the universal medicine which would cure all diseases, and prolong life indefinitely. It was the sulphur of the sun with which that body revivifies nature.

Paracelsus prescribed gold for purifying blood, and intimates that it is useful as an antidote in cases of