Metals and inorganic salts have been an important component of the medicinal compendia both of the ancient systems of medicine as also of the modern system. In Sidha system of medicine, which is one of the important indigenous systems of medicine still widely practised in India, big weight-age is given to the use of metals as medicaments alone or processed with plants and plant extracts. Its formularies describe at great length the methods of treating metallic elements to reduce their toxicity and increase permeability to make these mineral medicaments more efficacious. Even in Ayurveda, the major indigenous systems of medicine in the Indian subcontinent, mineral elements and salts are quite commonly used alone or as part of compounded formulations.