The earliest uses of gold as a remedy date back to antiquity, especially in Egypt and China. Metal was then given a wide variety of benefits.
At the dawn of modern times, the famous German physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) was the first to develop a solution of drinkable gold. He named his violet gold solution "Aurum potabile" (Drinkable Gold). Paracelsus wrote: "Of all the elixirs, gold is supreme and most important for us, it keeps the new body, renews and restores." He also said he took gold as a prophylactic, protecting himself against infections like plague.
After studying the work of Paracelsus, the English chemist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) prepared the first pure colloidal gold sample in 1857. In 1890 the famous German physician Robert Koch (1843-1910) won the Nobel Prize for discovering that compounds made of gold inhibit the growth of the bacillus causing tuberculosis. Still in the 19th century, gold was used as a drug to treat alcoholism. It was also used to treat pain resulting from rheumatoid arthritis.
The British physicist James C. Burnett wrote at the same time: "Some believe that gold belongs to this class of noble metals, such as silver and copper, which exert a strong influence on the nervous system." And then "Gold is an exciting one. Patients feel an indescribable feeling of well-being, they feel lighter (in their words) and more intellectually active. Gold is known to frequently produce a sense of erotic salvation that can go as far as priapism "
Meanwhile, the renowned French physicist J.A Chrestien published a comprehensive study of the positive effects of gold-based preparations on syphilis.
From the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, gold is listed as a treatment for nervous disorders, it appears in the first Merck manual.
In 1920, Samuel Fomon in his book "Medicine and the Allied Sciences" mentions "gold stimulates the nervous system, sexual organs and is used therapeutically as an aphrodisiac."
As the medicine of the 20th century developed gold disappeared from pharmacopeias, except in the case of rheumatoid arthritis. Forestier (1935) has demonstrated its effectiveness in arthritis, although the popularity of gold and the belief in its effectiveness has experienced ups and downs. Regarding the effectiveness of gold for neurological and glandular disorders, there seems to be no literature at the beginning of the 20th century, whether in favor of gold or against it. As for the possible biological role of gold as a trace element, the issue has only recently been explored.
In 1998 researchers Bajaj and Vohora studied the analgesic activity of gold preparations used in Ayurveda and Unani Tibb (two Indian medical traditions). Two traditional gold preparations were administered to the rat, as well as the drug auranofine (gold-based antiarthritis). The two Indian drugs and auranofine all had analgesic activity.
In 2006 the British Journal of Dermatology published the results of a group of researchers. 23 patients with discoid lupus were treated with oral gold. 19 showed improvement in their condition and 4 were completely cured. A similar observation was already made by H.E Miller almost 80 years earlier in 1928.
Nowadays, many people consume small quantities of gold without knowing it, since gold is used as a food additive, the E175, which is nothing but pure 24-carat gold.
Today, contemporary research is increasingly focused on the field of use of gold nanoparticles, used in particular in the fight against cancer.
As we saw above in the article "Chronology of colloidal gold", the pharmacological and toxic effects of gold are historically well known. Yet few studies on the biological role of gold as a trace mineral exists. Existing studies have shown that gold is mainly concentrated in glandular and reproductive tissues. In women, gold concentration varies with the menstrual cycle.
In 1977 the Greeks Grimanis, Koumantakis and Papadatos measured various trace elements including gold in the human placenta and the liver of the newborn at birth. They found gold in significantly higher concentrations (3 times more) in the placenta than the liver tissues. Because some essential trace elements (zinc, cobalt and selenium) were found in higher concentrations in hepatic tissue, they concluded that gold is a non-essential trace element. An alternative may be that gold is specifically involved in glandular reproductive activity, as will be seen below. - link -
Same year, Hagenfeldt, Landgren and Plantin measured various trace elements including gold in placental and uterine tissues in search of cyclical variations, including during pregnancy. It has been previously established that there are significant cyclical variations in the concentration of major elements of known importance such as sodium, potassium and copper. Using the uterus of women who undergo a hysterectomy, they found that gold levels were similar in the endometrium and the ovary decidua. There were cyclical variations in gold (as well as a number of other items), which were significant at the p < 0.05 level. They indicated that gold levels were slightly lower around mid-cycle than in other stages of the cycle, but the physiological significance of these changes is unknown. - link -
In 1984, Skandhan and Abraham measured gold levels in sperm, the researchers noted that "it is the richest source of gold reported in biological materials" (587). They also hypothesized that since gold was not found in a pathological sample (asthenozoospermia), it may be an indication that the reduction of this trace element may have led to this pathology. - link -
In 1984 again, Kauf, Wiesner and Niese measured the quantities of a certain number of trace elements in the hair of newborns. They noted "The investigation of the trace elements in the babies hair resulted in the remarkable observation that in the first three months of life, zinc, copper and gold show a considerable increase in their concentration levels, followed by a decrease. It must be emphasized that gold, although classified as a non-essential trace element behaves in the hair of children, as do the physiologically important trace elements such as zinc or copper" (p.299). - link -
Are there food sources of gold ? This may be an important issue since dietary factors may be responsible for most of the results presented as contradictory or divergent in micronutrient research. Nielsen and Warren studied potential sources of gold in the diet. They noted that gold was found in bee pollen in as much as 0.9 ppm (dry weight). He found two plants (in British Columbia and Canada) that could theoretically supply high amounts of gold - Phacelia sericea and Dryas drummondi - which possess 25-50 times as much gold as all other plants. Anderson, Brooks and Stewart (1998) discovered "hyper-accumulating" gold plants such as Indian mustard (Brassica juncea), up to 100 times higher than most plants. - likn -
In 1984 Dr. James and Dr. John Goodwin discussed in the Journal of the American Medical Association what they called "the tomato effect" or the rejection of effective therapies. This is an analogy with the long-held belief that tomatoes were toxic, despite evidence to the contrary.
The tomato was indeed a plant of the New World. It was brought back from Peru to Spain and quickly spread to Italy and France. By 1560, tomatoes had become a staple of the European diet but at the same time it was ignored or even actively rejected in North America. It was not until the 1800s that North Americans accepted the tomato as edible and began to cultivate it.
The Goodwin brothers tomato effect contrasts with the placebo effect where a positive (but false) value leads to therapies being accepted before they become useless or harmful. They therefore cite gold as an ideal example of this phenomenon. The original rationale behind the use of gold for arthritis was its efficiency against tuberculosis (hypothesis was that polyarthritis was a related infectious disease). When in 1945, the infectious theory of rheumatoid arthritis was discarded, gold therapy despite its proven efficacy fell into disfavour. "Gold began to regain its popularity only when the medical community accepted both evidence of the effectiveness of gold and its ignorance of its mechanism of action. The fact that gold now has an unknown mechanism of action (idiopathic) is therefore no longer an obstacle to its use, because polyarthritis has become an idiopathic disease too" (p. 2389).
Future research could focus on two aspects: the in-depth study of the effects of gold supplementation on neurological diseases, and the need to establish whether or not gold belongs to essential trace elements.
Establishing gold as an essential trace element is a major challenge. The few studies cited here are encouraging. A systematic exploration of gold concentrations in cerebrospinal fluid, blood, nervous and glandular tissue can be performed. The results would be interesting in neurological and tumor disorders (eg El-Yazigi et al., 1984), glandular disorders (eg Skandhan and Abraham, 1984) and developing infants (eg, Kauf et al. Al., 1984). But much more research is needed to confirm these observations and determine the biological role of gold. There are thousands of studies on such elements as chromium, boron, which have recently been proposed as essential nutrients (Nielsen, 1990). It takes on average about 30-40 years for the general acceptance and application of the discovery of a new essential trace element (Mertz, 1998). Further studies will be necessary to understand its exact physiological role, the effect of its deficiency and interactions with various factors (stress, etc.)
This research has the potential to raise gold as a significant therapeutic agent in a much wider range of disorders than those for which it is currently used, as well as help sort out the supposed benefits of its supplementation.
Gold And Its Relationship To Neurological/Glandular Conditions
Douglas G. Richards, Ph.D, David L. McMillin, M.A. Eric, A. Mein
Meridian Institute, International Journal of Neuroscience Vol. 112
