Three Books on Gold

taken for the sake of tolerating hunger, since they would have been diffused throughout the whole body and modified like other foods. What then? That gold neither soothes with its odor, nor does it nourish with its taste the vapors which are removed from human bodies—called by physicians "spirits"—nay, all metals are even of an unpleasant taste and sulfurous odor, and therefore they cannot but be harmful to those who lie sick, so far are they from retaining the departing soul with their soothing. There exists the opinion of Albert the Great, given generally, that the tastes and odors of all metals are in some way fetid, even if, just as there is the minimum of odor, so there is the minimum of fetor in gold, on account of the exceptional subtlety of sulfur collected in its temperament. Moreover, there are things which provide relief not only by smell, but more by taste, both to the healthy and the sick, and are sold at a lower price than gold. But when it occurred to my memory that Pliny had written that gold is applied to the wounded, and to infants against witchcraft so that they might be less harmed, and that it provides aid to some others, it also did not escape my memory that many more [claims]—if he could be of great prejudice to us—of the vituperation of gold than its praise had been written down by the same Pliny. Nor did I forget that he had committed to pages that a certain poison resides in gold, and I remembered that clause produced first of all by him: "For to whom is there medicine for the sake of digging?"—from which, if he does not exclude gold afterwards, it was certainly done, as is his perpetual custom, in accordance with the others.