HISTORICAL BACKGROUND and RESEARCH about COLLOIDAL SILVER

Silver has long been known for its special properties. During the past 2000 years, many civilizations have recognized the properties of silver in preventing diseases. For instance, the Romans used silver nitrate therapeutically, and the hermetic and alchemical writings of Paracelsus speak of the virtues of silver as a healing substance. The people of ancient Greece and Rome used silver containers for keeping liquids fresh. Through the centuries, royal households carried on this practice by storing their provisions in silver containers. Privileged family members used silver eating utensils; they had their meals served on silver plates and their drinks served in silver cups. Indeed, the skin of 'blue bloods' reportedly had a bluish tinge due to the minute traces of pure metallic silver they regularly consumed. In American pioneering days, new settlers travelling to the West would put silver dollars in their milk to delay spoiling. By the turn of the 20th century, silver was regarded as a proven germ-fighter.

In the 1800s, several physicians discovered the antibacterial (antigerm) qualities of silver and applied them to their practice of medicine. They used silver nitrate successfully in the treatment of skin ulcers, compound fractures and suppurating (draining puss) wounds. In 1881, Carl Crede pioneered the installation of dilute silver nitrate in the eye of neonates to prevent gonorrheal ophthalmia, a technique which has been in widespread use ever since. Von Naegeli and others in 1893 realized that the antibacterial effects of silver were primarily due to the silver ion. He coined the term oligodynamic to mean that a small amount of silver is released from the metallic surface when placed in contact with liquids. At the turn of the century, Dr. William Halstead, one of the founding fathers of modern surgery, advocated the use of silver foil dressings for wounds. These dressings were used extensively until just after World War II, and were listed in the Physician’s Desk Reference until 1955, when the use of antibiotics became widespread.

At that time the medical scientists of the early 1900´s discovered the body´s fluids to be colloidal, all kind of silver preparations (e.g. grinded or flash-powdered silver) have been developed and tried out. The first electro-colloidal silver has been produced in 1924 and became widely used in medicine as one of the main-stays of anti-microbial treatment. Dr. Henry Crooks was the first to show colloidal silver to be highly germicidal, yet absolutely harmless and non-toxic for humans. However, the high cost of silver combined with the fact that silver solutions could not be patented, motivated the development of more profitable infection-fighting drugs by the major pharmaceutical conglomerates. The new and cheaper prescription antibiotic drugs such as penicillin and others became the choice in medical treatments from 1938 onwards. Unfortunately, in the 1970´s it became evident that many types of bacteria acquired an immunity to these drugs. Some frustrated doctors, seeing their patients die from infections with antibiotic strain-resistant pathogens, began looking back to the past for answers. In doing so, they have rediscovered the amazing antimicrobial properties of electro-colloidal silver, which is much cheaper to produce nowadays.

Moreover, in the early 1970’s, Drs. Becker, Marino and Spadaro of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Syracuse, New York pioneered the study of silver-coated fabrics for the treatment of complex bone infections. Having studied with Dr. Becker, Dr. A. B. Flick began developing broader clinical applications for silver nylon fabrics in partnership with Dr. Becker during his Orthopedic Surgery residency training at the University of Vermont. Dr. Flick subsequently entered private practice and continued his research independently.

During roughly the same time, three other university centered research teams also investigated the wound healing properties of silver plated fabrics with the application of an electrical potential. Dr. Alvarez, at the Department of Dermatology, University of Miami, in 1985, studied the effect of electrically activated silver-coated fabrics on an animal model of partial thickness skin wounds in pigs. Dr. Marino and Dr. Albright, at the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Louisiana State University 1983 - 1986, studied the effect of electrically activated silver plated fabrics on chronic bone infections in humans. Dr. Chu and Dr. McManus, at the Army Surgical Research Center, Fort Sam Houston 1989 - 1996, studied the effect of electrically activated and non-electrically activated silver-coated fabrics on several animal burn wound models. The

Re-discovery of Silver as a Powerful Microbicidal (which is not at all immune-suppressive!)

Dr. Carl Moyer, chairman of Washington University's Department of Surgery, received a grant to develop better treatments for burn victims. Dr. Margraf, as the chief biochemist, worked with Dr. Moyer and other surgeons to find an antiseptic strong enough, yet safe to use over large areas of the body. Dr. Margraf reviewed 22 antiseptic compounds and found drawbacks in all of them. 'Popular antiseptics....can be used over small areas only.' he stated. Furthermore, disease organisms can become resistant to artificial antibiotics, triggering a dangerous super-infection. 'These compounds are also ineffective against a number of harmful bacteria, including the biggest killer in burn cases - a greenish-blue bacterium called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It almost always shows up in burns, releasing a poison.' Reviewing the medical literature, Dr. Margraf found repeated references to silver. Using among others silver nitrate, Dr. Margraf searched for other preparations of silver, and in the process helped re-discover electro-colloidal silver, which he found to be highly effective on the burns. As a result of these efforts, hundreds of important new medical uses for silver were found. Dr. Harry Margraf later concluded, 'Silver is the best all around germ-fighter we have.´

Much more researchers recognized not only a correlation between low silver levels in the human body and improper functioning of the immune system, but concluded by experiments that silver works on the full spectrum of pathogens without any side effects or damage to any part of the body. Furthermore, it was found that Silver was causing major growth stimulation of injured tissues. Burn patients and elderly patients noticed more rapid healing. Almost all strains of pathogens tested, even those resistant to antibiotics, were killed by colloidal silver.

One of the drawbacks was that the particle size of the silver never reached its optimum ultramicroscopic size and thus its highest level of efficacy. Back then, highly effective colloidal silver was very expensive to produce. The pharmaceutical industry wanted faster-working drugs that were cheaper and patentable... In addition, when manufactured improperly, or taken at hundreds of times the proper dosage with extraneous silver compounds included, a permanent skin discolouration, called argyria, could result. For these reasons colloidal silver fell out of favour. Even so, such prestigious journals as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet (1914) pub- lished the results of scientific studies and examined the many successful uses of colloidal silver. In 1910, Dr Henry Crooks, a pioneer in colloidal chemistry, wrote that: ...certain metals, when in a colloidal state, have a highly germicidal action but are quite harmless to human beings...it may be applied in a much more concentrated form and with better results... Bronchial tuberculosis...Staphylococcus pyogenes, various Streptococci and other pathogenic organisms are all killed in three to four minutes; in fact, no microbe is known that is not killed by this colloid in laboratory experiments in six minutes, [and] the concentration of the [silver] does not exceed twenty-five parts per million..."

In 1919, Alfred Searle, founder of the pharmaceutical conglomerate of the same name, wrote in his book The Use of Colloids in Health and Disease, that: ...applying colloidal silver to human subjects has been done in a large number of cases with astonishingly successful results. For internal administration, orally or hypodermically it has the advantage of being rapidly fatal to parasites without toxic action on its host. It is quite stable."

COLLOIDAL SILVER REAPPRAISED

Much later, in the 1970s, colloidal silver once again became a valued substance. Doctors at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, stumbled upon it while searching for effective treatments for burns victims, having tried many other medicines. Biomedical research has shown that no known disease-causing organism-bacteria; virus or fungus---can live for more than a few minutes in the presence of even minute traces of metallic silver. Jim Powell reported in an article, "Our Mightiest Germ Fighter", published in Science Digest (March 1978, pp. 59-60): "Thanks to eye-opening research, silver is emerging as a wonder of modern medicine. An antibiotic kills perhaps a half dozen different disease organisms, but silver kills 650. What's more, resistant strains fail to develop when using silver.

Moreover, sil virtually non-toxic." Larry C. Ford, M.D., of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the the School of Medicine's Center for the Health Sciences, reported in a November 1988 IE "I tested them [the silver solutions] using standard antimicrobial tests for disinfectants The silver solutions were anti-bacterial for concentrations of 10 organisms per I Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Neisseria genorrhoeae, Gardner Vaginalis, Salmonella ryphi, and other enteric pathogens, and fungicidal for Can albicans, Candida globata, and M. furfur." Biomedical researcher Robert O. Becker, M.D., from Syracuse University, has repc that "Silver stimulates bone-forming cells into growing new bone where it had not he for long periods vf time." Dr Becker is the author of The Body Electric and Cross Currents, and is also known for his work in regenerating the amputated limbs of 1 frogs. According to Dr Becker, "Silver did more than kill disease-causing organisms. It pro- moted major growth of bone and accelerated the healing of injured tissues by over 50 cent." In his research he discovered cell types that looked jnst like the active bone mar- row of children. "These cells grew fast," he wrote, "producing a diverse and surprising assortment of primitive cell forms able to multiply at a great rate, then differentiate into the specific cells of an organ or tissue that had been injured, even in patients over fifty years old. This ability overcomes the main problem of mammalian regeneration."

Dr Becker also discovered that silver "profoundly stimulates healing in skin and other soft tissues in a way unlike any known natural process...and kills the most stubbom infections of all kinds, including surrounding bacteria and fungus." He concluded that, "What we have actually done was rediscover the fact that silver killed bacteria, which had been known for centuries...; when antibiotics were discovered, clinical uses for silver as an antibiotic were discarded."