Evolution of Gold Therapy in Phthisis

desire for further knowledge on the subject. The actual date of its first application might be traced centuries back. Hopes and disappointments have come in their way, but the world-wide search for a cure for tuberculosis has gone on through the centuries. Gold salts came into use many centuries before Christ, for in ancient Hindu medicine the preparation ' Makaradhwaja ' was supposed to be a specific against tuberculosis and various (almost all) other diseases. Abu Moussa the Wise recommended the use of gold as a cure for all diseases. His findings can be traced back to the eighth century A.D. But it was not until about 1500 A.D. that we find it used as a specific for tuberculosis, when Paracelsus, the alchemist and chemist, used a compound of gold and mercury and called it the ' elixir of life \ Unfortunately, his experiments met with disasters and its use was dropped for a long time, and it seems that scientists gave up the idea altogether for a time. It was not until over three hundred years later that the therapy was revived by Chrestien (White, 1894). It was about this time that a real advancement was made towards the therapeutic effects of gold when Robert Koch (1890) reported his valuable laboratory findings, and began his experiments with the cyanide of gold. His laboratory findings were very encouraging and he showed that a dilution of 1 in 3,000,000 of gold cyanide was enough completely to inhibit