Three Books on Gold

...the power is situated between softening and attenuating the gold calx, to extract something which can be drunk, just as they also promise concerning gems, which no one is unaware cannot properly be drunk. But if the defenders say that gold liquefies in other ways, the opponents would not deny that, but they would assert that this happens either by consuming waters, with the addition of salt of a varied kind, or by biting juices, so that force is brought upon the gold, and it is removed from its own seat, which nature had bestowed upon it; hence, one might contend that it does not acquire that [quality] for the purpose of being constituted to more sincerely nourish human nature. For if you have mention of the nature of gold in itself, it will not be suitable for nutrition, just as was previously deduced from the Peripatetic school; if you speak of an admixed nature, even they themselves will say, by their own judgment, that it will not be gold: for it is certain that the liquor is served which has flowed drop by drop from glass vessels, while vapors carried aloft by the heat of fire are turned into water, and other things are mixed in, which are sought from the rest of the faculty of medicine. But if this is [to] drink gold or gems, why will those not be said to drink excrement, who drink wine extracted solely by a varied collection of excrements made rich for that task? I have pleaded the cause of those who would wish to expend potable gold, which I indeed would prefer to collect, and I should wish it to be excellently possible for the health of our body and others, especially since it is sufficiently well known that our surgeon Antonius, in previous years, [healed] a matron from the forum