Is Hydrochloric Acid Better Than an Antibiotic?
These days one regularly hears of deaths in hospital from antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria such as MRSA. And it is well documented that antibiotics are becoming increasingly less effective in the fight against bacteria in general.
But is there a better way to combat them?
There is a saying that "the old ways are the best". In this article, Wayne Martin suggests an old way that may well be not only an answer to the problem of hospital disease deaths, but an instant and inexpensive answer. And it might even make antibiotics redundant
All we have to do now is hope that someone will have the courage to try it.
This is to write about intravenous hydrochloric acid infusions, one part per 1,000 in the treatment of bacterial infections. This treatment had been developed by Burr Ferguson M.D. of Birmingham AL in about 1925. Dr. Ferguson had been a battle surgeon during World War 1 and he had seen the wounded die by the hundreds from infections. He quickly found that when an iv of 10 cc of one in 1,000 hydrochloric acid is given, there is almost at once a big increase in the white cell count.
The first patient treated with 10 cc of one in 1,000 hydrochloric acid suffered from a infected gun shot wound. Almost at once the patient's temperature became normal and the infection was abolished.
There was then a medical journal, Medical World, and in the years 1932 to 1935 it published many pages of letters from a score of doctors telling of success in the use of ivs of 1 in 1,000 hydrochloric acid in the treatment of bacterial infections. As a student at Purdue University in the years 1932 and 1933 I took the Medical World.
I feel now that this treatment of bacterial infections was so effective that there was never the need for the discovery of antibiotics.
Two things restricted the general use of ivs of dilute hydrochloric acid in the treatment of bacterial infections. One was that there was no major drug firm to foster its use to doctors. The other thing was that, in the 1930s, orthodox medical thinking held that nothing should be put in the vein, however there were many not so orthodox doctors who used ivs of 10 cc of 1 in 1,000 hydrochloric acid to treat bacterial infections, with dramatic success.
I am going to give the case of a dramatic use of this treatment in 1931. I told of this case in my letter in the Townsend Letter for Doctors in the December 2001 issue. I am going to retell of the case here. The report was in Medical World. The doctor was William Howell M.D. of Lexington, Tennessee.
He told of the following case:
The patient was age 15 and she was delivered of a very large baby that lived only for two hours. She lived in a log cabin in the woods. The delivery was done with the best aseptic condition that could be had in a log cabin. The patient weighed only 90 pounds. There were some small lacerations. On day three after delivery there was a message that the patient had a chill and high fever. She lived in a river bottom and I was in hope that it was malaria and I sent quinine. On the fifth day there was another message telling of the grave condition of the patient. In going into the sick room I saw at once that the message had been urgent. The girl was delirious, temperature was 106, pulse was 140, respiration was 40 and there was a discharge from the vagina with a fetid odor. Every other case I had seen like her had died of the infection.
I had some one in 1,500 hydrochloric acid with me but had feared to use it. I injected 10 cc of 1 in 1,500 hydrochloric acid into a vein with much trepidation. The following minutes were anxious ones for me as I hardly knew what to expect. I had never heard of hydrochloric acid being used to treat puerperal sepsis. I was thinking of the warnings of the fatal results of an injection of acid in the vein. I was holding the radial pulse when of a sudden there was sweat on the patient's neck and forehead and a slowing of the pulse. In a few more minutes the patient was bathed in a profuse perspiration and there was a stop to the chatter of her delirium. Thirty minutes after the injection she was conscious and I asked her how she felt. She said that she felt much better she wanted to go to sleep.
Within an hour of the injection, her temperature had dropped to 103, her pulse had dropped to 100 and respiration had decreased to 22. On the next four days I repeated the injections. On day six, temperature was 99, pulse was 72 and respiration was 19. Two days later I was called and told that her fever had returned. Her temperature was 101 and there was a free discharge from the vagina. I gave her one more injection of 10 cc of acid. All signs of the infection she had had completely disappeared.
A few days ago I was watching CNN on the TV. The subject was antibiotic resistant staph infections in hospitals now. A case was given of a 50 year old woman how went to a hospital in Indianapolis for a minor surgery. She was infected with a resistant staph infection. There followed a sad story. The infection spread from one organ to another and after two months, death. In the CNN report it was said that this was not an isolated case.
How much better would it have been if early on in her infection she had been treated with ivs of one in 1,500 hydrochloric acid.
This leads to another line of thought. In the M.J. Anderson Bulletin for May-June of 1979, Dr. Birger Jansson had a report on the appendix and colon cancer. In this report he said that patients who had the appendix removed were at twice the risk of having colon cancer. He said that the appendix is an important part of our immune defense, that it produces our cancer killing cells. If this were true, the appendix should be protecting us from cancer in general. Dr. Jansson suggested that we think of ways to keep an infected appendix. He made no suggestion as to how this may be done but the appendix is removed when one has a bacterial infection of the appendix.. It is suggested that when one has an infected appendix, one should consider injections for two days with 10 cc of one in 1,000 hydrochloric acid to see if surgery my be avoided and the appendix saved.
The Torrance Company of Portage, MI has 50 cc bottles of one in 500 hydrochloric acid for sale. Their phone is 800 327 0722.
Wayne Martin BS ChE
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