Silver’s History
Silver has been used medicinally for more than 2000 years. Hippocrates, the “father of medicine” wrote in his
medical texts that silver had beneficial healing and anti-disease properties. He praised silver for its tissue repair and wound healing abilities. It is reported that Cyrus the Great, king of Persia stayed healthy by drinking only boiled water stored in silver vessels. According to Herodotus, mule-drawn carts laden with silver urns followed King Cyrus wherever he went. During the Middle Ages, monks popularized the use of silver nitrate, a salt formed
by reacting silver with nitric acid, to treat ulcers and burns.
Pliny the Elder reported in AD 78 that silver slag, what’s leftover from smelting silver, “has healing properties as an ingredient in plasters”. In America’s Old West, people commonly dropped silver coins into barrels of water for
protection from water borne illnesses. NASA used silver in the water purification systems of the space shuttle and continues to use it in the water purification system of the international space station...
