Colloidal Silver Backed by Over 100-Year History of Research

Young girl student with glasses leans on a pile of books and looks up with a pensive face on a blue background - Colloidal Silver Backed by Over 100 Year History of ResearchMany people have only recently begun to learn about the astonishing healing and infection-fighting benefits of colloidal silver, but did you know that there are over 100 years of history of research relating to its medical usage?

Truth be told, colloidal silver’s broad-spectrum antimicrobial qualities have been known since the late 1800s when the substance was first produced. What’s more, even metallic silver has been used for thousands of years for health and wellness-related purposes.

Here’s a quick historical overview of what medical and clinical research experts were saying about colloidal silver over 100 years ago, and why it still holds true today…

Hi, Steve Barwick here, for The Silver Edge

As you might know, there’s a long, well-documented history of the healing properties of colloidal silver, but the history of its use dates further back than you might be aware.

According to an article titled, “History of the Medical Use of Silver“:

“Metallic silver was known to the Chaldeans as early as 4,000 B.C.E., and it was the third metal known to be used by the Ancients, after gold and copper.

Over these millennia, silver has been used for numerous medical conditions, mostly empirically before the realization that microbes were the agents of infection.

The metal was used in many configurations, including vessels or containers for liquid, coins, shavings, foils, sutures, solutions (e.g., nitrate, oxide, bromide, chloride, and iodide), colloids providing fine particles, and electric colloids (introduced in 1924, which provide even smaller particles of 0.1mcm to 0.001mcm in diameter).

Electric colloids of silver became the mainstay of antimicrobial therapy in the first part of the 20th Century until the introduction of antibiotics in the early 1940s.

Complexes of silver and protein known as mild silver proteins also were employed.

These formulations were delivered topically (by solution, ointment, or direct application of colloids or foils), orally, and by injection. By 1940, at least 50 silver products were marketed in the United States.”

— J. Wesley Alexander, Surgical Infections, Volume 10, Number 3, 2009.

Medical Use of Colloidal Silver in the Late 1800s and Early 1900s…

Indeed, colloidal silver use came into being shortly after Edison harnessed electricity in 1879 and researchers learned how to drive tiny silver micro-particles from pure silver rods suspended in water, by running electricity through them.

Chemical techniques for producing colloidal silver were also invented. And soon, numerous forms of colloidal silver were being used by doctors around the world, with names like Collargol, Protargol, Electrargol, Lunasol and many others.

What made colloidal silver so popular with doctors? In many cases, it was the vast panoply of infectious disease conditions which colloidal silver rapidly and quite effectively cured.

As Dr. Reynold Webb Wilcox, M.D., stated in January 1900, in the New England Medical Monthly and Prescription, in an article titled “Internal Antisepsis”:

“…colloidal silver has a very beneficial influence and often effects a rapid cure in recent and chronic sepsis and furunculosis, when secondary changes in the vital organs have not occurred.

[Doctors] have treated osteomyelitis, phlegmonous angina, furunculosis, erysipelas, so-called gonorrheal and articular rheumatism, etc., by this method.

Various reports, some very enthusiastic, have been presented; on puerperal fever (Peters, Jones, Voorhees), cerebrospinal meningitis (Schirmer), acute mastitis (Cumston), malignant scarlet fever (Crede), divers septic processes (Werler), furunculosis (Wolfram), and finally in purpura in the horse (Dieckerhoff).

Wilcox’s own experience in septic phlebitis, of which an unusually large percentage has occurred in his typhoid fever cases, has been most satisfactory…. In one instance of septic phlebitis following amoebic dysentery the results were almost marvelous.”

In layman’s terms, colloidal silver cured infections of the bloodstream, infected boils, infected bone, infection-induced fevers and just about everything you could throw at it if an infectious condition was involved in the disease process.

And as Robert Bartholow wrote of silver’s astonishing infection-fighting qualities in A Practical Treatise on Materia Medica and Therapeutics, way back in 1908:

“As a topical agent, silver may be used in surgical diseases, wounds, injuries, and in cases of septic decomposition.

Wherever diseases – either pure or mixed infectious – are caused by the staphylococcus, the streptococcus, and other forms of low organisms, this remedy is effective in a high degree.”

And as also reported in 1908, in the journal Post-Graduate (Vol. 23, #10, page 911), from the New York Medical School and Hospital:

“The properties of colloidal silver are, therapeutically, the following: antiseptic, inhibiting bacterial growth, inorganic ferment exercising catalytic action.

The drug is absolutely harmless and should be used (1) when at the outset the infection assumes a serious aspect; (2) when an infection, at first localized, tends to become generalized.”

In other words, colloidal silver was used to stop infections from becoming more serious, and to stop already-serious infections from spreading.

And as Dr. William Halstead, M.D. (see image above), one of the founding fathers of modern surgery, wrote of the infection-fighting qualities of silver way back in 1913:

“We may only have scratched the surface of silver’s medical brilliance! Already it is an amazing tool!

It stimulates bone-forming cells, cures the most stubborn infections of all kinds…and stimulates healing in skin and other soft tissues.

I know of nothing which could quite take its place, nor, have I known anyone to abandon it who had thoroughly familiarized himself with the technique of its application.”

Unfortunately, it took until 1975, some 60 years later, for medical science to finally accept silver’s role in stimulating bone-forming cells, and curing stubborn tissue infections around bone breaks, thanks largely to the remarkable clinical research of Dr. Robert O. Becker, M.D. of Syracuse Medical University.

But let’s get back to the older medical quotes. As the British Medical Journal stated in February 1917:

“Colloidal silver has been used successfully in septic conditions of the mouth including pyorrhea alveolysis, throat, ear, and in generalized septicemia, leucorrhea, cystitis, whooping cough and shingles.”

It seems there was hardly any kind of infection that colloidal silver didn’t work for! As Alfred E. Searle, author of Colloids in Biology and Medicine wrote in 1919:

“Applying colloidal silver to human subjects has been done in a large number of cases with astonishingly successful results…it has the advantage of being rapidly fatal to microbes without toxic action on its host. It is quite stable. It protects rabbits from ten times the lethal dose of tetanus or diphtheria toxin.”

As researcher Fred Wilbur Tanner, stated in the journal Bacteriology and Mycology of Foods, in 1919:

“Biasiotti (1910) reported that colloidal silver electrically prepared would kill Staphylococcus aureus, B. typhi, and Bacterium diphtheria; in a few hours. The silver is probably united to the protoplasm in some way because Gram positive bacteria are made Gram negative.”

As Dr. Henry Crooks, M.D. stated in 1921:

“I know of no microbe that is not killed by silver in laboratory experiments in six minutes.”

And finally, according to the August, 1920 edition of The National Druggist, Vol. 50, page 388:

“Colloidal silver is powerfully destructive of toxins of bacterial origin…. Experiments on rabbits show that colloidal silver renders subject ‘immune’ from the effects of large quantities of tetanic or diphtheritic serum.

…colloidal silver has proved its value in combating the following ailments among others – tonsilitis, gonorrhoeal conjunctivitis, spring catarrh, pustular eczema of scalp, septic ulcers of legs, boils, chronic cystitis, ringworm, soft sores.

But we must not prolong the list of the good works of colloidal silver. Suffice it that at the present time it is the most extensively used in medicine of all the sols.”

In short, colloidal silver was the star infection-fighting agent of the early 1900s, before the advent of prescription antibiotic drugs like sulfa and penicillin in the 1930s and ’40s.

Silver’s Untimely Demise
and Much-Needed Resurrection

Once prescription drugs were developed and the modern pharmaceutical industry began forming, colloidal silver usage by medical doctors gradually fell out of favor.

But over the ensuing decades, as more and more bacteria began developing resistance to prescription antibiotic drugs, cutting edge doctors began looking back to the past to find out what was used before antibiotic drugs were developed. And what they found was, of course, colloidal silver.

As newer research was conducted in the 1970s on silver as an infection-fighting agent, the interest in colloidal silver as a safe and powerful antimicrobial substance was rapidly renewed.

And today, usage of safe, natural colloidal silver has become popular with millions of Americans who have experienced its phenomenal healing and infection-fighting benefits.

What’s more, many modern-day medical doctors and clinical researchers are embracing colloidal silver usage, as well.

As Dr. Joseph Weissman, M.D. board certified immunologist and Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California Medical School has stated:

“Today, many antibiotics are losing the battle with germs. Fortunately, the best germ killer, which was discovered over 2,000 years ago, is finally getting the proper attention from medical science – natural silver.

I sincerely recommend that everyone have electrically generated colloidal silver in their home as an antiseptic, antibacterial and antifungal agent.”

And as Dr. Ron Surowitz, D.O., M.D., former head of the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association has stated:

“Sometimes a treatment can be worse than the illness, but not in the case of Colloidal Silver.

I have my patients spray or swish Colloidal Silver in their mouths from one to three times daily, depending on the severity of their condition…or, in a dose of one quarter to one teaspoon, and even up to one tablespoon, one to three times daily for situations that are more problematic.

I also have them use it in small amounts daily as a preventative…It’s interesting how many of my patients improve with the use of Colloidal Silver. It enhances the immune system where other antibiotics cause yeast overgrowth…

[As an example] one patient had persistent yeast infections. Having had no success with both prescription and non-prescription treatments, she called me, at her wit’s end.

I suggested that she try a douche of two teaspoons of Colloidal Silver in a quart of water. Three days later she was evaluated in my office. The symptoms of her yeast infection had vanished, and there was no visible sign of infection.”

And as Herbert Slavin, M.D., founder and director of the Institute of Advanced Medicine, Lauderhill, Florida has stated:

“…. Ionic silver is increasingly being recognized for its broad-spectrum antimicrobial qualities and the fact that it presents virtually none of the side-effects related to antibiotics.

Ionic silver is entirely non-toxic to the body…. Reports of any pathogens developing resistance to ionic silver are rare. Some reports indicate it even kills drug-resistant strains of germs.

Ionic silver is also a powerful tissue-healing agent, so much so that it has been used topically for decades in burn centers and currently represents one of the fastest growing sectors – if not the fastest growing sector – in wound care today.

The fact that ionic silver is effective against a very broad range of bacteria is well established and, due to recent advances in the delivery of ionic silver together with the problems associated with antibiotics, it is being used in a rapidly growing range of dietary-supplement, medical, and industrial products.

…. A study at the University of Arizona recently showed ionic silver to be effective against the coronavirus that researchers use as the surrogate for SARS.”

And as board certified Clinical Nutritionist Byron J. Richards, CCN, has stated;

“…. The high efficacy in the use of silver to kill bacteria and fungus is not in question by anyone. This does not mean it kills every type of bacteria or fungus. And in the ones it does kill it does not mean it kills all of them.

It simply means that the antibiotic properties of silver are quite potent – and the risk to human health in terms of toxicity is negligible. This is a far better risk/benefit profile than commonly used antibiotics.”

Finally, as Dr. Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., of the famous Tahoma Clinic in Washington State has written:

“Colloidal silver just might be the next germ-fighting wonder drug. And not just for the serious threats making headlines: It’s also effective against bacterial infections like strep throat, viruses like the flu, and fungal infections like Candida.

No matter how much a germ mutates, it can’t change enough to escape the damaging effects of colloidal silver. And in the process, the silver doesn’t harm human tissue or kill off the good bacteria in the intestine the way antibiotics and other medications do….

…. Beginning in the 1970s, several independent researchers found that silver ions easily destroy Candida and other fungi. But it wasn’t until a pilot study during the mid- 1990s that included human patients suffering from terminal AIDS that medical researchers established solid evidence showing just how quick and effective silver ions can be in the treatment of Candida as well as HIV.

In this study, nine individuals who were near death were divided into two subgroups. One group suffered from HIV and a terrible Candida infection. The other group suffered from both HIV and an extreme form of malnutrition (known as Wasting Syndrome).

The researchers found that in both groups the colloidal silver was capable of killing pathogens and purging the bloodstream of germ defenses in order to restore the immune system.”

In short, we have come back full circle to nature’s wonder cure for infection and disease: colloidal silver.

What worked in the beginning against infection and disease continues to work today, even as prescription antibiotic drugs continue to fall to the wayside, thanks largely to the crisis of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

And yes, colloidal silver even kills the superbugs, as thoroughly documented with numerous clinical studies in my previous article, “Colloidal Silver versus the Superbugs“.

Learn to Make Your Own Colloidal Silver for Pennies

Micro-Particle Colloidal Silver GeneratorColloidal silver can be purchased at just about any local health food store, or through a number of online sources including Amazon.com.

However, it’s quite literally one of the most expensive and heavily marked-up natural supplements in existence.

Health food store owners, for example, often charge as much as $20-$30 for a tiny four-ounce bottle. Yet the cost to manufacture four ounces of colloidal silver is about 12 cents. Yes, I said twelve cents.

Of course, people are willing to pay through the nose for colloidal silver, since it’s safe and natural, and works so well against infections and related diseases.

But thankfully, there’s no need to pay such exorbitant prices for colloidal silver, when you can make your own, quickly and easily, in the comfort and privacy of your own home, for about 36 cents a quart.

Yes, you can make it yourself for its actual cost, and altogether skip the sky-high mark-ups charged by health food stores!

If you’re interested in learning how to make your own high-quality colloidal silver at home, for about 36 cents a quart, here are some additional short articles you might want to take a look at:

Meanwhile, I’ll be back next week with another insightful article on colloidal silver….

Yours for the safe, sane and responsible use of colloidal silver,
Steve Barwick Signature
Steve Barwick, author
The Ultimate Colloidal Silver Manual

Helpful Links:

FREE Colloidal Silver Safe Dosage Report

Colloidal Silver Secrets Group on Facebook

Make Your Own Colloidal Silver for Pennies

.9999 Pure Silver Wire for Making Colloidal Silver

Important Note and Disclaimer: The contents of this Ezine have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Information conveyed herein is from sources deemed to be accurate and reliable, but no guarantee can be made in regards to the accuracy and reliability thereof. The author, Steve Barwick, is a natural health journalist with over 30 years of experience writing professionally about natural health topics. He is not a doctor. Therefore, nothing stated in this Ezine should be construed as prescriptive in nature, nor is any part of this Ezine meant to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice. Nothing reported herein is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. The author is simply reporting in journalistic fashion what he has learned during the past 17 years of journalistic research into colloidal silver and its usage. Therefore, the information and data presented should be considered for informational purposes only and approached with caution. Readers should verify for themselves, and to their own satisfaction, from other knowledgeable sources such as their doctor, the accuracy and reliability of all reports, ideas, conclusions, comments, and opinions stated herein. All important health care decisions should be made under the guidance and direction of a legitimate, knowledgeable and experienced health care professional. Readers are solely responsible for their choices. The author and publisher disclaim responsibility and/or liability for any loss or hardship that may be incurred as a result of the use or application of any information included in this Ezine.

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[IMPORTANT NOTE AND DISCLAIMER: We are not doctors. We are distributors of electronic appliances and nutritional supplements. Therefore we cannot and do not offer medical advice. Please do not call with medical questions. If you have a medical problem, please see your licensed physician. Self-treatment is not recommended. The FDA has not evaluated the information contained on this web site. Products distributed by The Silver Edge are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Testimonials are the subjective experiences of our customers and are not intended to be construed as being prescriptive in nature, nor a guarantee that the usage methods described are safe, effective or reliable, nor a guarantee that your results will be the same; individual results may vary. Additionally, the contents of this web site are strictly for information purposes only, and should not in any way be construed as providing or attempting to provide medical advice. Information on this web site is derived from sources deemed to be accurate and reliable, but no guarantee, express or implied, can be made regarding the accuracy or reliability of same. Therefore readers are encouraged to verify for themselves and to their own satisfaction the accuracy and reliability of all reports, recommendations, conclusions, comments, and opinions. The Silver Edge does not make any claims or promises as to health benefits accruing from the use of any product. There is plenty of publicly available independent documentation -- both pro and con -- regarding the uses and efficacy of colloidal silver and its long history in health and medicine. For a comprehensive overview, you may want to obtain a copy of The Ultimate Colloidal Silver Manual (547 pages, from Life & Health Research Group, LLC, 1-888-846-9029). Or see the link above to "Some Interesting Sources of Information on Colloidal Silver." Colloidal silver generators are electronic appliances designed to produce high-quality silver colloid. They are not medical devices. The Silver Edge specifically disclaims responsibility or liability for any loss or hardship that may be incurred by the reader as a result of the application of any information included on this web site, or as a result of the use or misuse of any electronic product or nutritional supplement. You are solely responsible for your health and nutrition choices. Anyone with additional information on colloidal silver is encouraged to write to The Silver Edge at the address directly below, so that it can be shared with others who may be interested.]