Holy Cow, it’s Actually Go(ld)mutra!

The intrepid scientists of Junagadh University are not the only ones to be driven by the belief that gold can be found in urine, though not necessarily only in that of cows. The 17thcentury German alchemist Hennig Brand decided the way to divining the ‘philosopher’s stone’ — that would turn base metals into gold — lay in urine. Of course, his exertions with 1,500 litres of collected excretions instead led to the discovery of an entirely different P — phosphorus — but the connection between gold and golden liquid clearly fired future scientists. No doubt Herr Brand would have been very pleased indeed that Junagadh’s boffins found traces of gold in urine, albeit in that of Gir cows rather than humans. Some quarters will no doubt also hail it as further affirmation of the inestimable value of cow’s urine.

It cannot be denied that the 3-10 mg of ionic (water-soluble) gold salts retrieved from a litre of cow urine is no piddling amount. And there is surely a serendipitous synergy in the fact that India has the world’s largest population of cattle as well as of gold buyers. Little wonder then that the scientists’ next goal is to examine the emanations of all 39 other Indian cow breeds to determine if they could constitute a sizeable source of moo-lah. That could be the way for financially strapped gaushalas to strike gold.