Inorganic gold compounds

With a few notable exceptions such as gold and platinum, metals do not occur in earth s crust in their elemental states. They are present instead as one of two or more elements combined into inorganic crystalline compounds called minerals. To recover the metals from their entrapping compounds, it is natural to choose the least expensive options we mine and process only those minerals from which the desired metals can be easily obtained. In practice, this means that we choose those minerals that require the least expenditure of energy in order to effect the chemical disintegration and release of the metal. 

Paracelsus believed that the purpose of alchemy was to create new medicines rather than gold. He relied upon synthetic inorganic (metallic) compounds as medicines rather than the extracts of herbs used since ancient times. 

Some inorganic compounds leave traces even after a thorough wash and scrub. For example, deposits of lead and silver compounds are difficult to remove. Many lead and silver compounds are among the most water-insoluble materials, but they are well detected by LDI-MS at subsolubility concentrations [14]. Sometimes chemical treatment is necessary to remove spent materials from plates. For example, traces of lead carbonate can be removed by rinsing the plate with dilute HCl followed by hot water. For silver compounds or metallic silver, removal by chemical complexation works best. For removing silver and gold compounds, dipping the... 

Inorganic chemicals have been used in medicine since ancient times, although perhaps today we might question the efficacy of these remedies. One of the earliest examples was the use of mercury as a drug by Greek physician Hippocrates later Paracelsus used mercurous chloride as a diuretic. In the 19th century, mixtures of gold compounds with sodium chloride were used to treat syphilis — unsuccessfully ... 

King, C., Wang, J.-C., Khan, M.N.l. and Fackler, J.P. Jr (1989) Luminescence and metal-metal interactions in binudear Gold(I) compounds. Inorganic Chemistry, 28, 2145-2149. 

Burini, A., Mohamed, A. and Fackler, J.P. (2003) Cyclic trrnudear Gold(I) compounds synthesis, structures and supramolecular add-base m-stacks. Comments on Inorganic Chemistry,... 

Schmidbaur, H. and Dash, K.C. (1982) Compounds Of Gold In Unusual Oxidation-States. Advances in Inorganic Chemistry, 25, 239—266. 

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