Use Of Gold |
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It may sound like a survival from the Middle Ages or an expensive piece of quackery to suggest gold as a medicine. The actual quantity used is trivial -- 10 mg (1/2,500 oz) or so at a time, which will hardly make you rich. It has to be given by injection because the body is incapable of absorbing it through the skin or through the stomach. Only a little can be given at a time because stomach. Only a little can be given at a time because larger doses may cause serious rashes, tummy upsets and other things. Unlike the other drugs, however, it is only removed very slowly from the body and therefore accumulates dose by dose until after ten or twenty injections there is enough to work. I cheerfully say 'work' -- that is the sum total of our knowledge -- no one has discovered hot it works -- all we know is that it cuts short the acute stage of rheumatoid arthritis in some people.
The 'quin' part of its name is a reminder that this was invented to take the place of quinine in treating malaria. Some people taking it for malaria were also suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and some of these found their arthritis improved. Like gold, it has to be given for weeks at a time to have any effect/ It works on the process of auto-immunity in rheumatoid arthritis that is referred as "self destruction"; it restores the crazy immunity system to order. Its action is rather like that of the Law putting a man in prison: it does not restore the damage done, nor does it leave us anywhere near certain that when treatment is stopped the trouble will not start again. |
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