Medical Uses

The exceptional properties of gold and the mystique surrounding it naturally led from the earliest times to possible medical applications, not least as an elixir sought by alchemists. Pliny, in the 1st century BC, suggested gold ‘is laid upon wounded men and little children to protect them against magic potions’. From the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century alchemists devised a multitude of recipes for potable gold for most ailments, though one sceptical sixteenth century metallurgist rightly noted that gold gave warmth to the heart, ‘particularly to those who have great sacks and chests full of it’.

Advances in scientific knowledge by the eighteenth century ended gold’s prescription as a cure-all cordial but genuine uses were not found quickly. A French physician, J A Chrestian, however, developed a double gold chloride by mixing sodium chloride with gold chloride, a prescription which was quite widely used in the treatment of syphilis in Europe and the United States during the early nineteenth century. An American doctor, Leslie Keeley, also achieved considerable notoriety in the 1890s by using multiple injections of double gold chloride as a cure for alcoholism.

The most significant genuine medical use of gold, developed in clinical trials in the 1920s, is in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. A very mild solution of gold cyanide, at a concentration of only 0.5ppm, is injected into the patient’s muscles in cautiously increased doses to a level of 25 milligrams per week. The gold solution inhibits the growth of the tubercle bacillus, which causes the disease, and considerable relief is achieved after about six months. Gold also has a limited application in the treatment of cancer, in which ‘seeds’ of radioactive gold-198 are used.

The most widespread belief in the medicinal benefits of gold persists in India, where it is used in Ayurvedic medicine for many ailments such as sclerosis, cirrhosis of the liver and hardening of the arteries. An official allocation of about 75 kilograms (2,400 ounces) per year has long been made to India’s pharmaceutical manufacturers for these remedies.

Metallic gold is bio-compatible with the body and resists corrosion. It has found increasing application in dental and bio-medical applications such as crowns and bridges, implants, pacemaker wires, etc.