Three Books on Gold

may assist; and this while discussing medical material. But while he discusses poisons, he says that undiluted wine in which glowing gold has been extinguished is a remedy against aconite, but he says that this is not unique to it, but that it is a common remedy for silver, iron, and iron slag, which are just as powerful; and Paulus Aegineta accepts this while discussing poisons. Galen, much younger than Dioscorides, neither discussing the power of simple medicines nor the composition of them, makes mention of gold, as far as I can remember. Nor am I unaware that Nicander of Colophon sang in his Alexipharmaca that gold or silver is beneficial; for whether because he was a poet, or because he was not held in such high regard by Dioscorides and Galen that his testimony would be cited as legitimate in a case, or because he writes that silver, just as much as gold, is effective ἐκ πώματι θολερῷ (in a turbid drink), seems to have little weight; for he signifies that the liquid is made turbid by the metal, and that the same is drunk. But yet I would not deny that gold possesses medical power; but how small a portion, I ask, will be found if we compare it to the countless things in which there resides the power of healing and of driving away poisons? Let the judgment be the same for silver. But if it brings aid neither to medical capacity nor contributes to pleasure, whence, I ask, comes that common accumulation of so many vessels, whether of gold or silver, sought through so many labors? For a table furnished with at least silver vessels seems to designate nobility. But Vitruvius, in the eighth book, while discussing waters, at the end—