GOLD

                                                         

Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. It is a chemical element with the symbol Au and atomic number 79.

The earliest records of the use of gold for medicinal and healing purposes come from 

Alexandria, Egypt. Over 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians ingested gold for mental, bodily

 and spiritual purification. The ancients believed that gold in the body worked by 

stimulating the life force and raising the level of vibration on all levels.

The Alchemists of Alexandria developed an "elixir" made of liquid gold. They believed 

that gold was a mystical metal that represented the perfection of matter, and that its 

presence in the body would enliven, rejuvenate, and cure a multitude of diseases as well 

as restore youth and perfect health.

As many as 4,500 years ago, the Egyptians used gold in dentistry. Remarkable examples 

of its early use have been found by modern archaeologists. Still in favor today as an ideal

 material for dental work, approximately 13 tons of gold are used each year for crowns, 

bridges, inlays and dentures. Gold is ideal for these purposes because it is non-toxic, can

 be shaped easily, and never wears, corrodes or tarnishes.

In medieval Europe, gold-coated pills and "gold waters" were extremely popular. 

Alchemists mixed powdered gold into drinks to "comfort sore limbs," which is one of the 

earliest references to arthritis.

During the Renaissance, Paracelsus (1493-1541) - who is considered the founder of 

modern pharmacology - developed many successful medicines from metallic minerals 

including gold. One of the greatest alchemists/chemists of all time, he founded the 

school of Iatrochemistry, the chemistry of medicine, which is the forerunner of pharmacology.

In the 1900s, surgeons would often implant a gold piece under the skin near an inflamed 

joint, such as a knee or elbow. As a result, the pain would often subside or cease 

altogether.

In China, the restorative properties of gold are still honored in rural villages, where 

peasants cook their rice with a gold coin to replenish the mineral in their bodies, and

 fancy Chinese restaurants put 24-karat gold-leaf in their food preparations.

Medicine

Conceived of as perhaps the most anciently administered medicine, (apparently according to one source by shamanic practitioners) and known of by Dioscorides, apparent paradoxes of the actual toxicology of the substance nevertheless suggests the possibility still of serious gaps in understanding of action on physiology.

In medieval times, gold was often seen as beneficial for the health, in the belief that something so rare and beautiful could not be anything but healthy. Even some modern esotericists and forms of alternative medicine assign metallic gold a healing power. Some gold salts do have anti-inflammatory properties and are used as pharmaceuticals in the treatment of arthritis and other similar conditions. Gold based injections have been explored as a means to help to reduce the pain and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis andtuberculosis. However, only salts and radioisotopes of gold are of pharmacological value, as elemental (metallic) gold is inert to all chemicals it encounters inside the body.

Gold alloys are used in restorative dentistry, especially in tooth restorations, such as crowns and permanent bridges. The gold alloys' slight malleability facilitates the creation of a superior molar mating surface with other teeth and produces results that are generally more satisfactory than those produced by the creation of porcelain crowns. The use of gold crowns in more prominent teeth such as incisors is favored in some cultures and discouraged in others.

Colloidal gold preparations (suspensions of gold nanoparticles) in water are intensely red-colored, and can be made with tightly controlled particle sizes up to a few tens of nanometers across by reduction of gold chloride with citrate or ascorbate ions. Colloidal gold is used in research applications in medicine, biology and materials science. The technique of immunogold labeling exploits the ability of the gold particles to adsorb protein molecules onto their surfaces. Colloidal gold particles coated with specific antibodies can be used as probes for the presence and position of antigens on the surfaces of cells. In ultrathin sections of tissues viewed byelectron microscopy, the immunogold labels appear as extremely dense round spots at the position of the antigen.

Gold, or alloys of gold and palladium, are applied as conductive coating to biological specimens and other non-conducting materials such as plastics and glass to be viewed in a scanning electron microscope. The coating, which is usually applied by sputtering with anargon plasma, has a triple role in this application. Gold's very high electrical conductivity drains electrical charge to earth, and its very high density provides stopping power for electrons in the electron beam, helping to limit the depth to which the electron beam penetrates the specimen. This improves definition of the position and topography of the specimen surface and increases the spatial resolution of the image. Gold also produces a high output of secondary electrons when irradiated by an electron beam, and these low-energy electrons are the most commonly used signal source used in the scanning electron microscope.

Nuclear medicine : The isotope gold-198 (half-life 2.7 days) is used, in nuclear medicine, in some cancer treatments and for treating other diseases.

Food and drink

• Gold can be used in food and has the E number 175.
• Gold leaf, flake or dust is used on and in some gourmet foods, notably sweets and drinks as decorative ingredient. Gold flake was used by the nobility in medieval Europe as a decoration in food and drinks, in the form of leaf, flakes or dust, either to demonstrate the host's wealth or in the belief that something that valuable and rare must be beneficial for one's health.
• Danziger Goldwasser (German: Gold water of Danzig) or Goldwasser (English: Goldwater) is a traditional German herbal liqueur produced in Germany, and contains flakes of gold leaf. There are also some expensive (~$1000) cocktails which contain flakes of gold leaf. However, since metallic gold is inert to all body chemistry, it has no taste, it provides no nutrition, and it leaves the body unaltered.