The health-giving and therapeutic properties of silver have been known and handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. The ancient Phoenician, Babylonian and Greek civilizations were aware of silver's ability to disinfect, purify and preserve food and water.
The ancient Egyptians used silver as a thin beaten out paper like product to wrap around wounds. The first written mention of its use in a medical context is found in a pharmacopia published in Rome in 69 BC, while the first clear record of its use as a healing agent is in the writings of the Mohammedan School founded by Geber (702 - 765 AD).
In historical reference that the aristocracy and upper classes never got sick (e.g. the plague) because they used silver cutlery, plates, goblets and jugs for storing wine and water, Dr. Jerome Alexander, in his book, "Colloid Chemistry", said that he tested the concept and found that silver ions were rubbed off the metal and did, indeed, destroy harmful bacteria.
"Born with a silver spoon in his mouth" was always a reference to being born into a wealthy family. Actually, it is not so much a reference to wealth, but to health! This is why silver has always been know as a noble precious metal.
History texts show that serious medical study of silver began in the late 1880s with it being used to successfully treat typhoid and anthrax bacterial infections.
Late 19th & Early 20th Century
In 1884, the German obstetrician Dr. Frans Crede observed that up to 79% of the children in institutions of the blind were there as the result of exposure to maternal venereal disease
(opthalmia neonatorum). He reported that 10% of the infants born at the University Clinic of Leipzig had the disease. In 1893, drawing on his knowledge of the medicinal properties of silver, Crede introduced the installation of 1 to 2% silver nitrate solution into the eyes of newborns. There was an immediate decrease in the incidence of infant blindness
(gonoccoal opthalmia) from 10% to 0.2 %.
As a result, the Crede prophylaxis became obligatory during the first half of the 20th century in the USA and most European countries. Even since the appearance of antibiotics in the 1940's, Crede's prophylaxis has continued and is still regulated by statutes in many countries throughout the world.
By the turn of the 20th century, the successful testing and use of silver compounds was widespread.
Dr. Henry Crookes is credited for the wide use of silver in the early 1900s. He used it for subduing gonorrhea, tuberculosis and staphylococcus, as well as many other infectious organisms. His scientific reports concluded, "I know of no microbe that is not killed in laboratory experiments in six minutes." (1)
According to studies published in a 1916 issue of Transactions of the American Association of Obstetricians and
Gynaecologists, Colloidal Silver not only disabled bacteria, viruses and bacillus toxins, it bolstered the immune system
At that time, Diphtheria and tetanus were still a scourge for humanity, and scientists were infecting animals with these bacillus toxins in laboratories in order to find an answer. In 1919, Dr. Alfred Searle succeeded. He found that silver protected rabbits from ten times the lethal dose of tetanus!
In the 1920's and 1930's, silver was ground very fine like flour, suspended in water and was used orally for many infections and disease conditions, topically on burns, and for fungal infections. Silver was long used for plates for the surgical repair of bones. Until almost 1970, it was common for scientists and doctors to put a silver dime in a petri dish to sterilize it.
Up until the 2nd World War, (when the use of penicillin and
sulphur drugs became the rage in the medical industry), silver proved to be enormously effective against infectious organisms and extremely safe to use. As a result, silver was widely used in medicine as one of the mainstays of
anti-microbial treatment. In fact, it became the choice of medical practitioners to combat virtually every strain of bacteria, virus and fungus. But there was a problem.
Silver, being a pure natural element, could not be patented. This profit limitation prompted the development of more profitable infection fighting drugs.
Thus - and particularly after the development of patented antibiotics - the use of silver in medicine fell out of favour.
1) Dr. Henry Crooks, author of "Use of Colloids in Health & Disease", quoted in "Report: Colloidal Silver" -
Health Consciousness, Vol. 15, No.4.
Recent Research: The comeback of Silver Colloids
Two major developments in recent times has put the focus squarely back on Electro Colloidal Silver:
1. In the 1970's, Dr. Carl Moyer, chairman of Washington State University's Department of Surgery, received a grant to develop better treatments for serious burns.
Dr. Harry Margraf was Dr. Moyer's chief biochemist on this project. With their staff of medical researchers they tested 22 antiseptic compounds and rejected them all. The problem was that infections in burns often failed to respond to antibiotics. Most antiseptics have a very caustic nature, actually destroying the delicate new tissues and are very painful. The greatest problem was the bacterium Psuedomonas
acruginose, which is particularly infectious to burns and does not respond to any antibiotic or antiseptic.
It was found that silver had been used effectively for hundreds of years in one form or another to treat infection and silver had well proven itself to be totally non-toxic at all concentrations. In all the hundreds of years of use, no pathogen has ever developed an immunity to silver.
They first tried silver nitrate, but it proved to be corrosive and painful. It also stained everything badly and upset the balance of body salts. Other compounds of silver were tried. Finally Colloidal Silver was proven to be the most effective, to have no side effects and the burns healed relatively fast with it. They then developed a salve from Colloidal Silver known as
"Sulfadiazine", marketed under the brand name
"Silvadene". Since then, it has been the standard medication for burns in all the major hospital burn centres throughout the world. It has proven to heal burns considerably faster and to greatly reduce scarring.
2. Another entirely unrelated line of research that guided the new thinking concerning the treatment of infections and especially wounds, was published by the brilliant
orthopaedic surgeon
and research scientist Prof. Robert O. Becker in his classic best seller "The Body Electric".
The extraordinary healing properties of electrically generated positive silver ions
In his brilliant book "The Body Electric", Prof. Becker highlights one of his amazing experiments on a patient who was about to have his leg amputated.
The man's broken right tibia and fibula both refused to heal and there was a huge open wound with five kinds of infection.
Prof. Becker states:
"I debrided the wound, removing the dead tissue and all grossly infected or dead bone. There wasn't much left afterward. It was an enormous excavation running almost from his knee to his ankle. In the operating room we soaked a big piece of silver nylon in saline solution and laid it over the wound wrapped the leg, and connected the battery unit."
Amazing results!
About a week and a half later, Prof. Becker tells us " all of our bacterial cultures were sterile - all five kinds had been killed." The battery attached to the nylon produced electrically charged silver ions, as Prof. Becker later explained: "The silver ions quickly killed off all five kinds of bacteria the antibiotics had failed to kill in a year and half."
Prof. Becker continues: "The soft healing tissue, called granulation tissue, was spreading out and covering the bone. In two weeks, the whole base of the wound, which had been over eight square inches of raw bone, was covered by this friendly pink carpet. The skin was beginning to grow in too, so we could forget about the grafts we thought we'd need to do.
"I decided to take an X-ray to see how much bone we'd lost" (he had expected the bone to start withdrawing before it started re-growing). "I could hardly believe the picture. There was clearly some bone growth! I removed the cast, felt the leg, and found that the pieces were all stuck together. John watched, and when I was done he lifted his leg into the air triumphantly".
After hundreds of exhaustive experiments along these lines, Prof. Becker concluded: "They" (cells exposed to positive silver ions) "profoundly stimulate soft tissue healing...in a way that's unlike any known natural process "
Prof. Becker states on pg. 167: "of course, the germ-killing action of silver had been known for some time the Soviets use silver ions to sterilise water aboard their space station it's especially well suited for use against several kinds of bacteria simultaneously. It kills even antibiotic-resistant strains, and also works on fungus infections".
On pg. 175 he says: "It stimulates bone forming cells, cures the most common stubborn infections of all kinds of bacteria, and stimulates healing in skin and other soft tissues."
In his chapter "The Silver Wand", he states: "We may only have scratched the surface of positive silver's medical brilliance".
For in-depth information regarding Dr. Robert O. Becker's brilliant research regarding electro medicine and the regeneration of tissue, read "The Body Electric - Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life" by Robert O. Becker, M.D., and Gary
Seldon. Publishers: William Morrow & Co., New York.
ISBN # 0-688-06971-1
"Cross Currents" by Dr. Robert O. Becker
Publishers: Penguin Putnam
ISBN # 0-87477-609-0
For anybody interested in how the body functions on electricity,
these books are absolutely essential reading!
These two developments suddenly started researchers all over the world looking at silver in a new light. Many astounding research results would follow:
Electro Colloidal Silver has been successfully tested at the UCLA Medical Laboratories (one of the foremost medical research centres in the world), where it neutralised every virus, bacteria and fungus on which it was tested within minutes (2).
(2) Larry C. Ford, M.D. of the Department of Obstetrics and
Gynaecology, UCLA School of Medicine, Centre for the Health Sciences.
Dr. Bjorn Nordstrom, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, has used silver in his cancer cure method for many years. He says this brought rapid remission in cancer patients given up by other doctors.
Numerous laboratory tests, including those formally accepted by the FDA (as part of the FDA approval process for products such as
Silveron, which is used for the treatment of severe burns) have shown that silver has significant biocidal properties. Silver is highly effective in reducing population counts in single celled organisms such as virtually every form of bacteria ever tested.
In a world proliferating with new diseases - and new multi drug resistant (MDR) strains of old diseases, such as Staphylococcus aureus [Staph], Enteroccus fuecium [EF], Tuberculosis [TB], Streptococcus pneumoniae [Strep] and Pseudomonas aeruginosa - the future of the positively charged silver ion has arrived!
Thanks to new electrical technology over the last forty years, the re-emergence of positively charge silver colloids is rapidly spreading around the world and becoming one of the best remedies the public now has to protect themselves from disease, new and old.
More important, with the availability of high quality silver colloid home generators from SilverGenesis Technologies, people can now empower themselves and their families, as well as their animals, plants and birds against bacterial, viral and fungal infections of all kinds.
