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Aurum Metallicum: The Homeopathic Remedy for Melancholy, Heart Complaints, and High Blood Pressure
Among the deepest-acting remedies in the homeopathic materia medica, Aurum Metallicum — the remedy prepared from pure metallic gold — is the one most closely tied to crushing melancholy, to the heart and circulation, and to the driven, self-critical personality that burns out under its own exacting standards. If you or someone you care for carries a heavy sense of failure, lies awake with a pounding heart, or struggles with high blood pressure and dark moods, Aurum Metallicum is a remedy worth understanding. This profile covers its history, its key indications, the constitution it suits, how it is prescribed, and how it compares with similar remedies.
What Is Aurum Metallicum? History and Origins
Gold has fascinated healers since antiquity. Alchemists prized it as aurum potabile, “drinkable gold,” and gold preparations were used in European medicine for centuries to treat melancholy, heart weakness, and venereal disease. Boericke notes that this use of gold as an anti-venereal and anti-scrofulous remedy is very old, but was largely forgotten by the orthodox school until homeopathy rediscovered it and placed it on a scientific basis. Samuel Hahnemann proved Aurum Metallicum in the early nineteenth century, and it has been a cornerstone of the materia medica ever since.
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Buy From Amazon As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.William Boericke observed that gold, given full play, attacks the blood, the glands, and the bone, producing conditions that bear a striking resemblance to mercurial and syphilitic infections — and with them, states of profound mental depression. John Henry Clarke, in his Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, made one of the most quoted statements in all of homeopathy: “No drug produces more acute mental depression than Aurum.” Clarke also valued gold as one of the best antidotes to the chronic effects of mercury, a pressing concern in the heavily mercurial medicine of his era.
If you are exploring this remedy for yourself, a 30C potency is the most common starting strength used for the mental and circulatory picture:
Key Indications for Aurum Metallicum
Aurum acts deeply, and its clearest indications cluster around the mind, the heart, the bones, and the eyes. These are the classic presentations homeopaths look for.
Deep Depression and Melancholy with Suicidal Thoughts
This is the signature of Aurum. Boericke describes a feeling of self-condemnation and utter worthlessness, profound despondency, a thorough disgust of life, and thoughts of suicide — “every opportunity is sought for self-destruction.” The person may talk of suicide, despair of themselves and of others, and carry excessive scruples of conscience. There is a great fear of death alongside a longing for it, and a hopelessness that feels physical, as though it lived in the chest.
Heart Complaints with Palpitations and Violent Beating
The classic Aurum heart symptom is the sensation that the heart stops beating for two or three seconds, immediately followed by a tumultuous rebound, with a sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach. Palpitations are violent and anxious, the pulse is rapid, feeble, and irregular, and there may be pain in the heart region extending down the left arm to the fingers. Clarke records nightly paroxysms of pain behind the sternum.
High Blood Pressure and Arterial Congestion
Boericke lists high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis among Aurum’s leading uses, and specifically recommends the thirtieth potency for increased blood pressure. There is sclerosis of the liver, the arterial system, and the brain; congestions of blood to the head and chest; visible beating of the carotid and temporal arteries; and great ebullitions, as if the blood were boiling in the veins.
Bone Pains, Especially at Night
Boring pains in the bones, markedly worse at night, are a keynote. Aurum covers exostosis and caries of the nasal, palatine, and mastoid bones, pains in the bones of the head that are worse on lying down, and destructive bone changes that recall secondary syphilis. Clarke notes that sufferers are awakened by bone pains — in despair. Soreness of the affected bones is better in the open air and worse at night.
Eye Complaints with Dimness of Vision
Aurum has a well-marked eye picture: hemiopia, in which only the lower half of objects is seen while the upper half seems invisible; tension in the eyes with a gradual diminution of sight; extreme photophobia; sparks, flames, and fiery objects before the eyes; and vascular cornea with interstitial keratitis.
Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs
Pain and swelling of the testicles, chronic induration, hydrocele, and violent erections all appear under Aurum. So does the striking “pining boys” picture described by Boericke and Allen: boys who are low-spirited and lifeless, with weak memory, no appetite for plain food, undeveloped testicles, and none of the usual “boyish go.”
Sensitivity to Noise
The Aurum patient is raw to the world. Boericke lists oversensitiveness to noise, excitement, and confusion; Allen adds oversensitiveness to smell, taste, hearing, and touch; Clarke records hearing that is too sensitive, with oversensitiveness to all pain and to cold air. Every stimulus seems to grate.
Constitution and Personality: The ‘Gold’ Personality
The classic Aurum patient, in the old texts, is sanguine, with black hair and dark eyes and an olive-brown complexion — though light-haired scrofulous types also suit it. Allen adds: lively, restless, anxious about the future, often elderly, corpulent, tired of life.
Modern homeopaths describe the “gold personality” in terms that will sound familiar to anyone who has met one: serious, responsible, duty-driven. These are the people everyone relies on — the conscientious professional, the provider, the one who quietly carries the family. They set high standards and usually meet them, until one day they do not. After a failure, a financial loss, a disappointment, or even a contradiction, their anger turns inward. Where another person would rage at the world, the Aurum person blames himself, feels worthless, and spirals into guilt and self-reproach. A deep sense of failure — of not measuring up — sits at the heart of the state, and the depression that follows is real, heavy, and sometimes dangerous.
Modalities: What Makes Aurum Worse or Better
The modalities of Aurum are clear and well verified. The complaints are worse at night, and especially from sunset to sunrise — Clarke calls this a leading condition of the remedy; worse from cold weather, with many complaints coming on only in winter; worse from mental exertion, from emotion, and from contradiction; worse from rest and from lying down.
They are better from moving about and walking, from getting warm, and in the open air — Clarke notes the Aurum patient may even seek the open air in bad weather because it relieves. Allen adds: better in warm air, when growing warm, in the morning and during summer.
Dosage and Potencies
Boericke’s guidance is the third to the thirtieth potency, with the thirtieth especially suited to increased blood pressure. In everyday practice, potency choice follows the depth of the complaint:
- 6C suits milder, more recent complaints and is gentle enough for sensitive people or children; a common rhythm is two to three times daily for a few days.
- 30C is the standard for the persistent mental and circulatory picture — depression, palpitations, blood pressure concerns — taken once or twice daily for up to about a week, then stopped and observed.
- 200C is a deep, single-dose potency for long-standing constitutional states, best given under the guidance of a qualified homeopath, who will wait and watch the response before ever repeating.
A remedy is chosen on the whole symptom picture, never on a single symptom alone. If symptoms do not improve, or if the dark mood deepens, stop the remedy and seek professional help rather than repeating doses.
Aurum Metallicum Compared with Similar Remedies
Aurum shares its territory with several other remedies, and telling them apart is the heart of good prescribing.
Aurum Metallicum vs Natrum Muriaticum
Both are major remedies for grief and depression with self-reproach, and they are often confused. The classic distinction: Natrum Muriaticum withdraws and broods after a specific loss — a bereavement, a breakup, a disappointment — holds grudges, struggles to cry, and is worse from consolation. Aurum’s depression is more driven and far more dangerous: the person feels utterly worthless, is haunted by thoughts of self-destruction, and is worse from sunset to sunrise. A crude rule of thumb homeopaths use: “blames others, Natrum Muriaticum; blames himself, Aurum.” Physically, Nat Mur leans toward hammering headaches and herpetic eruptions, while Aurum carries the cardiac complaints, high blood pressure, and deep bone pains.
Aurum Metallicum vs Aurum Arsenicosum
Aurum Arsenicosum, the arsenite of gold, shares Aurum’s profound depression and its syphilitic and mercurial bone history, but it has a territory of its own: chronic aortitis and valvular heart disease, lupus, phthisis in syphilitic headaches, and anemia with chlorosis — accompanied, Boericke notes, by a rapid increase of appetite. When the heart-and-depression picture is joined by marked anemia or a striking appetite change, Aurum Arsenicosum may be the closer match; Aurum Metallicum itself remains the broader constitutional remedy.
Aurum Metallicum vs Lachesis, Pulsatilla, and Sepia
Lachesis is jealous, suspicious, and loquacious, worse on waking and from the pressure of tight collars, with left-sided complaints; its patient explodes outward. Aurum’s patient is self-condemning and silent, worse from sunset to sunrise, with the heart that stops and then rebounds. Pulsatilla is the gentle opposite: mild, weepy, yielding, and changeable, worse in stuffy rooms and better from consolation and open air — where Aurum is driven and guilty, Pulsatilla is soft and seeks comfort. Sepia’s depression differs in kind again: indifference, a flat “I don’t care,” aversion to family and duties, worse from mental exertion and better from vigorous exercise. Sepia has gone numb; Aurum still cares desperately, and blames himself for everything.
Safety Notes: When to Seek Immediate Help
Aurum Metallicum is a profound remedy, and its mental picture demands respect. Suicidal thoughts are an emergency, not a symptom to manage at home. If you or someone you love has thoughts of self-harm, reach out for help immediately — contact a crisis line, a doctor, or emergency services. Do not wait, and do not rely on a homeopathic remedy in place of urgent care.
Similarly, chest pain that radiates down the left arm, breathlessness, or fainting requires immediate medical assessment. Aurum Metallicum is not a substitute for cardiac medication or blood pressure treatment, and it should never be used to replace prescribed medication without medical supervision. Unexplained bone pain deserves a medical workup, since deep destructive bone changes are beyond self-treatment. And one more clarification: a homeopathic remedy is not a gold supplement — Aurum Metallicum carries no nutritional gold and should never be taken as one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Aurum Metallicum used for in homeopathy?
It is used for deep depression with feelings of worthlessness and self-condemnation, for heart complaints with violent palpitations, for high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, for bone pains worse at night, for eye complaints with dimming vision, and for certain disorders of the male sexual organs.
Can Aurum Metallicum help with high blood pressure?
Boericke recommended it for increased blood pressure, specifically in the thirtieth potency, and it appears in the homeopathic literature for arteriosclerosis and arterial congestion. It is a constitutional remedy, not a quick fix, and must never replace prescribed blood pressure medication.
Which potency should I choose — 6C, 30C, or 200C?
For milder or recent complaints, 6C is a gentle starting point. For the persistent mental and circulatory picture, 30C is the standard choice. Deep, long-standing states call for a single 200C dose, best managed by a qualified homeopath.
How long should I take Aurum Metallicum?
A short course — days rather than weeks — is the norm: 6C for a few days, 30C for up to about a week, then stop and observe. If nothing changes, or if the mood darkens, stop and get professional advice instead of repeating doses.
Is Aurum Metallicum safe alongside prescription medication?
It is gentle and generally well tolerated, but it should never replace prescribed heart or blood pressure medication, and any combination is best discussed with a doctor and a qualified homeopath, especially when depression is involved.
Can it be used for grief-related depression?
Yes — grief, fright, anger, disappointed love, and contradiction are listed among its causes. But the Aurum state is heavier than ordinary grief: it carries self-blame and thoughts of self-destruction, and if those appear, immediate professional help matters more than any remedy.
What should I do if I or someone I know has suicidal thoughts?
Seek help immediately. Contact a crisis line, a doctor, or emergency services. Suicidal thinking is a medical emergency, and a homeopathic remedy is never a substitute for urgent care.
If you would like to keep Aurum Metallicum in your home kit, here is a general source to browse:
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before starting any treatment.
