A short history of colloidal silver - from coin to Mesosilver

august 6 2007

Silver has always had a powerful attraction to me.
So it's fun to find out more about it.

Silver, as a mineral, was already used at 4000 B.C.
The Persians put their water in silver vessels, to prevent illnesses from drinking water.
If they knew how it worked? I doubt it.
But they were clever enough to be aware of the disinfectant capacity of silver, and so were the ancient Babylonians and Greek.
As were the Romans. They also used silver for medical treatments, and untill today many civilisations use silver compounds to treat burns and open wounds.
Silver was also used to disinfect water and milk. That's why the old quaichs (scottish drinking vessels) had a coin laid in at the bottom.

Too much silver in the blood leads to a greyish, bluish skin, called argyria.
Royalty not only used silver in drinks, but they also used silver utensils and tableware during an extended period. Thanks to the skincoloration they were said to be of blue blood.

Almost all our grandparents, and even most parents, got a drop of silver nitrate in the eyes after birth to protect against germs that were transmitted from the mother to the child, or from the midwife to the baby.

Do you know that NASA uses a silver based water purification system?

Untill now people use silver in different forms to prevent infections and to cure them. Noses, lungs, throats and all sorts of other places of infections are targetted by watery solutions, glycerine solutions or others with fine powedered silver.
There has been so many written accounts of the healing power of silver, that I don't know how many ilnesses and infections it prevents and cures. It's a lot!

With the discovery of penicilline and other antibiotics silver was pushed to the background. It was far more interesting to use modern medicine and products from procedures that normal people couldn't understand.

But the people who were in favor also did their research and they found a way to produce silverpowder that was so fine that the eye couldn't see it.
A colloid consists of ultra fine particles that are typically 0.1 to 0.001 of a micron in diameter, which are suspended in a medium.

We now know that colloidal silver doesn't have the adverse effects of the old ways of administering, and it doesn't interact (to my knowledge) with any other medication.

With the development of even more advanced methods scientists were able to change the properties of these small particles.
Research showed that it's not the amount of particles alone that causes colloidal silver to be effective.
It's the area of the particle that defines it's availability - it's surface area.

So you have to be aware of what you buy, because you can spend a lot of money on a lotion with huge visible particles of silver and see no effect whatsoever.

I've been asked if there are people who are allergic to silver.
There's a relatively very small group, so when you're allergic to silver, don't use it.
Also read the disclaimer at the site of the manufacturer.