Gold, in the materia medica, is the remedy of the darkest recorded mental state. Clarke is categorical: "No drug produces more acute mental depression than Aurum, and in any case where this profound melancholy is found, Aurum must be well studied."
The remedy is triturated metallic gold — Aurum foliatum. Kent preserves the history: Hahnemann gave it potentised and "it did not work, but he thoroughly triturated it until he got it to the fifteenth potency and then it worked and restored that patient to the bosom of his family." Boericke places its pathology precisely: "by attacking the blood, glands, and bone," Aurum develops "conditions bearing striking resemblance to mercurial and syphilitic infections," and it is for such deteriorations that it "assumes great importance as a remedy."
In practice Aurum is a deep constitutional prescription: syphilitic and mercurial histories, destructive bone disease, cardiovascular pathology with high blood pressure, and above all the melancholic states that follow grief, prolonged responsibility and reversed fortune. The mental symptomatology below — including the recorded suicidal disposition — is presented as the textbooks present it: observed proving and clinical material for professional assessment, in a register that neither dramatises nor dilutes it.
This guide profiles Aurum for clinical study from Boericke's Materia Medica, Kent's Lectures, Clarke's Dictionary, Boger's Synoptic Key and Lippe's Keynotes. The originals can be read in full — Kent's Aurum, Boericke's Aurum and Clarke's Aurum — through Similia's free digital materia medica.
The Aurum Constitutional Type
Clarke's constitutional sketch: "Suited to sanguine people with black hair and dark eyes, olive-brown complexion. Also light-haired scrofulous persons. Pining boys, girls at puberty, and old age. Syphilitic and mercurial patients." Boericke's corresponding entry is the memorable one — "pining boys; low spirited, lifeless, weak memory" — with "atrophy of testicles in boys" among the recorded physical counterparts of that failure to thrive.
Kent names the aetiology: "The causes of this state of insanity are prolonged anxiety, unusual responsibility, syphilis and loss of property," and elsewhere, "Ailments from grief, disappointed love, fright, anger, contradiction, mortification." Clarke's causation list adds mercury, alcohol and "reserved displeasure."
Physiologically the type is vascular. Kent: "Erethism or vascular fullness characterizes nearly all complaints" — ebullitions, flushes of heat, pulsating vessels, "a false state of plethora" with turmoil that precedes each localisation of disease. Boger's Synoptic Key summarises the ground: "vaso-motor mobility; erratic ebullitions" with venous congestion to head and chest, indurations, sclerosis, necrosis, chronicity — the "mercurio-syphilitic dyscrasia."
Mental and Emotional Picture
Self-condemnation. Boericke opens the mind section with "feeling of self-condemnation and utter worthlessness." Kent develops it: "Self-condemnation, continual self-reproach, self-criticism, a constant looking into self; she does nothing right, everything is wrong, nothing will succeed, hopelessness." The patient "imagines he cannot succeed in anything, and he does everything wrong; he is in disunion with himself," and "imagines that he deserves reproach in consequence of having neglected duty."
Weariness of life. The gravest recorded feature, stated here as the sources state it. Boericke: "Profound despondency... with thorough disgust of life, and thoughts of suicide. Talks of committing suicide." Lippe's keynote: "Fear, even to suicide." Kent: the love of life itself "is perverted and he loathes life, is weary of life, longs to die." Clarke records the patient who "feels that all is against her and life is not desirable, and the thought of death alone gives pleasure," and "pain makes her desperate so that she would like to jump out of the window" appears in Kent. Kent adds an observation of direct practical weight for assessment: the state can be entirely concealed — the patient "has silently brooded over his state... he has told nobody of it." Alongside this runs, paradoxically, "great fear of death" (Boericke).
Vehemence at contradiction. "Peevish and vehement at least contradiction" (Boericke); Boger: "Vexed mood; enraged by least contradiction." Kent describes the profound melancholic who "sits silent and says nothing," but "when disturbed he is aroused to great vehemence, anger and violence" — "melancholy, feels hateful and quarrelsome."
Hurry. "Constant rapid questioning without waiting for reply. Cannot do things fast enough" (Boericke). Boger confirms: "Loquacity. Rapid questioning."
Oversensitiveness — with one striking exception. "Oversensitiveness; (Staph) to noise, excitement, confusion" (Boericke); Lippe: "oversensitiveness to all pain and to the cold air." Yet Clarke notes the patient is "oversensitive to noises, but music >" — and Boger lists music among the ameliorations. A melancholic who is soothed by music and open air is a genuine Aurum pointer.
Alternating states. Boger: "Brooding melancholy; alternating with irritability or moroseness." Lippe, twice: "Hysterical spasms, with laughing and crying alternately." Clarke: "Alternate peevishness and cheerfulness."
Physical Affinities
Bones
"Destruction of bones, like secondary syphilis. Pain in bones of head, lumps under scalp, exostosis with nightly pains in bones. Caries of nasal, palatine and mastoid bones" (Boericke), the affected bones "better in open air, worse at night." Kent: "Boring in bones," pains that "tear, the bones ache as if they would break," driving the patient out of bed at night to walk. Lippe's keynote is simply "pain in the bones at night."
Heart and vessels
The signature symptom: "Sensation as if the heart stopped beating for two or three seconds, immediately followed by a tumultuous rebound, with sinking at the epigastrium" (Boericke). Boger's version: "Oppression at heart; as if to stop, then gives one hard thump," with "violent palpitation; at puberty," angina pectoris and aortic disease. Clarke: "When walking, the heart seems to shake as if it were loose," and pain in the heart region "extending down left arm to fingers." Boericke records "high blood pressure," arterio-sclerosis, "nightly paroxysms of pain behind sternum," and Lippe the "great ebullition and palpitation of the heart."
Head
"Violent pain in head; worse at night" (Boericke). Kent: intense, maddening pain "often accompanied by a sensation as if air were blowing upon him; he looks around to see where the draft comes from when there is none." Skull bones sensitive to touch; congestive headaches with bloated, shiny face; exostoses; baldness in syphilitic subjects.
Eyes and nose
"Extreme photophobia... Double vision; upper half of objects invisible" (Boericke) — Clarke's "vertical half-sight" and hemiopia. Violent pains in the bones around the eye, sticking pains from without inward; interstitial keratitis and vascular cornea. The nose: "ulcerated, painful, swollen, obstructed," with caries, "putrid smell from nose," ozaena, and the "knobby tip of nose" Boger renders as "red knobby nose."
Liver and abdomen
"Right hypochondrium hot and painful" (Boericke); Boger: "Soreness over liver. Hepatitis. Ascites. Jaundice, of pregnancy. Liver, with heart symptoms." Kent ties the spheres together: Aurum produces "such affections of the liver as are associated with cardiac affections," typically in mercurialised patients with enlarged liver and melancholy.
Glands and sexual organs
"Pain and swelling of testicles. Chronic induration of testicles... Atrophy of testicles in boys" (Boericke). Kent: parotid, inguinal, mammary glands, testes and ovaries "undergo states of hardness, infiltration." In the female sphere: "uterus enlarged and prolapsed," vaginismus, and Clarke's grave clinical note — "uterine affections with depression and tendency to suicide," including suicidal melancholia during pregnancy.
Sleep
"Sleepless. Sobs aloud in sleep. Frightful dreams" (Boericke). Clarke: "Nocturnal sleep till four o'clock in the morning only. Awakened by bone pains; in despair."
Key Modalities
Worse from:
- Night — from sunset to sunrise; Clarke calls this "a leading condition" of the remedy
- Cold weather, getting cold, winter; cloudy weather (Boger)
- Depressing emotions; grief, contradiction, reserved displeasure
- Mental exertion
- Abuse of mercury or Kali iodatum (Boger)
- Lying; the skull bones are painful "especially lying down" (Clarke)
Better from:
- Cool open air — "desire for the open air" is doubled in Lippe's keynotes
- Cold bathing (Boger); Kent: "many symptoms disappear after washing, especially cold washing"
- Music
- Walking; motion — Lippe: "amelioration from moving, while walking and on getting warm"
- Becoming warm — Kent: "Generally > growing warm," noted with the headaches
The temperature picture is double-sided and worth mastering: the patient is "painfully sensitive to cold" (Boger), yet during the vascular orgasms "he wants the doors and windows open, wants to get out in the cool air; wants the clothing thrown off" (Kent).
Keynote Symptoms
- Self-condemnation and utter worthlessness; imagines he has neglected his duty
- Disgust of life; talks of suicide — recorded in every source, may be silently concealed
- Great fear of death coexisting with weariness of life
- Peevish and vehement at the least contradiction
- Rapid questioning without waiting for reply
- Boring bone pains at night; caries of nasal, palatine and mastoid bones
- Sensation as if the heart stopped, then a tumultuous rebound
- Great ebullitions — congestions to head and chest with palpitation
- High blood pressure with arterio-sclerosis
- Worse from sunset to sunrise; many complaints only in winter
- Better open air, cold bathing, music, walking
- Pining boys with low spirits and undeveloped organs
- Sleep only till four in the morning; sobs aloud in sleep
Clinical Applications
Melancholic and depressive states. The territory Clarke defines: wherever "this profound melancholy is found, Aurum must be well studied" — after grief, disappointed love, business reverses and prolonged responsibility, in the climacteric flushes-and-despair picture, and in the concealed brooding states Kent describes. All of this is recorded symptomatology to inform professional assessment of seriously depressed patients, never a substitute for it.
Syphilitic and mercurial dyscrasia. Boericke: "frequently indicated in secondary syphilis and effects of mercury," and when syphilis is implanted on the scrofulous constitution, "gold seems to be especially suited to the vile combination." Kent: "Terrible melancholy after abuse of Mercury."
Bone disease. Caries, exostoses, nightly osteocopic pains — nasal, palatine, mastoid, cranial.
Cardiovascular disease. Angina, valvular lesions "of arterio-sclerotic nature (Aurum 30)," hypertrophy, high blood pressure, ascites "often in conjunction with heart affections."
Hepatic affections with cardiac involvement and the characteristic mental state.
Glandular indurations — testes, mammae; testicular atrophy in pining boys; ozaena and fetid otorrhoea after scarlatina.
Uterine prolapse and induration with the recorded depressive accompaniment.
Differential Diagnosis
Aurum vs. Natrum muriaticum. Both are studied in the chronic effects of grief and disappointed love — causations Kent and Clarke record for Aurum directly. Aurum's grief settles into self-condemnation, disgust of life, vascular ebullitions and nightly bone pains; consult the Natrum muriaticum guide for its contrasting picture of silent, dwelling grief without Aurum's destructive pathology and vehemence at contradiction.
Aurum vs. Ignatia. Ignatia meets the acute, recent stage of the same causations; Aurum the settled, structural stage — hopeless brooding, organ pathology, the winter and night aggravation. Where an Ignatia state deepens into fixed self-reproach and weariness of life with cardiac or bone symptoms, Aurum's record demands study.
Aurum vs. Mercurius. Boger's "Related" remedy, and the closest pathological twin: Boericke observes that Aurum's conditions bear "striking resemblance to mercurial and syphilitic infections," and it stands high among antidotes to mercurial over-dosing (Clarke). In practice the differential is often historical — the Aurum case is the old mercurialised patient, with enlarged liver, bone caries and melancholy following the drugging.
Aurum vs. Pulsatilla. Kent's own comparison, made on the open-air desire: "This patient ranks along with Pulsatilla as to temperature; but Aurum is not mild, gentle and yielding, he is obstinate, irascible, the very opposite of the Pulsatilla patient."
Repertorisation Tips
These rubrics carry Aurum in high grade:
- Mind; LOATHING; life and Mind; SUICIDAL disposition
- Mind; REPROACHES himself
- Mind; DELUSIONS; neglected; duty, he has neglected his
- Mind; AILMENTS FROM; grief and Mind; AILMENTS FROM; love, disappointed
- Mind; ANGER; contradiction, from
- Mind; MUSIC; amel.
- Generalities; NIGHT; agg.; sunset to sunrise
- Generalities; PAIN; bones, in; night
- Chest; PALPITATION of heart; tumultuous, violent
- Eye; PHOTOPHOBIA
- Generalities; AIR; open; amel.
Anchor on the causation (grief, reversed fortune, syphilitic or mercurial history) plus the mental core — self-reproach with weariness of life — and confirm with the physical generals: nightly bone pains, the stopped-then-thumping heart, the sunset-to-sunrise aggravation, the open-air and music ameliorations. A repertorisation that rests on the mental rubrics alone should be checked against these generals before prescribing. Our beginner's guide to repertorisation sets out the method in more detail.
Deepening Your Study
- Kent's Lectures give the fullest account of the perverted affections — the will disturbed before the intellect — with the aetiologies and the mercury history
- Boericke supplies the tissue pathology (blood, glands, bone), the cardiovascular indications with their potency note, and the gold-salt comparisons
- Clarke's Dictionary holds the constitutional types, the causation list, and the fullest symptom registers — including the sleep-till-four and vertical half-sight curiosities
- Boger's Synoptic Key condenses the vascular erethism and the wandering pains that "finally attack heart"
- Boger's General Analysis flags the general rubrics — sadness, boring pains, ascending aggravation, open-air amelioration
- Lippe's Keynotes state the essentials in eleven lines, from "melancholy" to the bone pains at night
You can read all of these side by side for any remedy through Similia's free digital materia medica. To place Aurum among its peers, see the guide to the essential polycrest remedies, or read how materia medica and repertory work together in case analysis.
