CHAP. 25.—EIGHT REMEDIES DERIVED FROM GOLD.
Gold is efficacious as a remedy in many ways, being applied to wounded persons and to infants, to render any malpractices of sorcery comparatively innocuous that may be directed against them. Gold, however, itself is mischievous in its effects if carried over the head, in the case of chickens and lambs more particularly. The proper remedy in such case is to wash the gold, and to sprinkle the water upon the objects which it is wished to preserve. Gold, too, is melted with twice its weight of salt, and three times its weight of misy;918 after which it is again melted with two parts of salt and one of the stone called “schistos.”919 Employed in this manner, it withdraws the natural acridity from the substances torrefied with it in the crucible, while at the same time it remains pure and incorrupt; the residue forming an ash which is preserved in an earthen vessel, and is applied with water for the cure of lichens on the face: the best method of washing it off is with bean-meal. These ashes have the property also of curing fistulas and the discharges known as “hæmorrhoides:” with the addition, too, of powdered pumice, they are a cure for putrid ulcers and sores which emit an offensive smell.
Gold, boiled in honey with melanthium920 and applied as a liniment to the navel, acts as a gentle purgative upon the bowels. M. Varro assures us that gold is a cure for warts.921