Intravenous Hydrochloric Acid for Treatment of Bacterial
Infection
Editor:
There is much in the news media of late of the great
danger of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. We have a few bacteria
now for which there is only one expensive antibiotic that will contain
them. There is a dire warning that the time may not be far off when
there will be deadly bacteria resistant to all antibiotics.
Here it is suggested that we go back and have a good
look at intravenous infusions of 10cc of hydrochloric acid, from one
part per in 500 to one part per 3,000.
This work originated with Burr Ferguson, MD of Birmingham,
Alabama. During World War I he had been a battle surgeon in France where
he was seeing the ravaging effect of bacterial infections in wounds.
Dr. Ferguson picked up the concept of treating bacterial infections
with intravenous hydrochloric acid from another surgeon, Dr. Granville
Hains in 1927. Dr. Hains had been using intravenous hydrochloric acid
one part per 3,000 in treating pruritus ani with success.
Dr. Ferguson then began treating many kinds of bacterial
infections with success with intravenous infusion of 10cc of one in
1,000 hydrochloric acid. When he tried to publish his results he found
that no leading medical journal would accept his reports.
There was a medical news magazine then that reported
on topics that today may be called alternative medical treatments. It
was called The Medical World. In 1932 as a student at Purdue
University, I subscribed to it, I think for $5.00 a year. Dr. Ferguson
wrote extensively for this publication and many not-too-orthodox doctors
read what he wrote and treated bacterial infections with hydrochloric
acid infusions. Some of them reported success in so doing in The
Medical World.
Dr. Ferguson reported that very soon after an infusion
of hydrochloric acid, there would be a marked increase in white cell
count and in phagocytes; also that red cells had an increase in oxygen
content. He suggested that one infusion of hydrochloric acid would increase
oxygen in red cells in excess over what would result from maintaining
the patient in an oxygen tent.
Dr. Ferguson reported that in treating gonorrhea with
bladder irrigations of 1 in 1,000 hydrochloric acid, he was able to
get negative smears in two days with even more rapid relief from the
symptoms of burning and pain.
I am going to give one case here of the use of hydrochloric
acid in treating a bacterial infection, a case to show its remarkable
fast antibacterial effect. The case was reported in The Medical World.
The doctor was William Howell, MD of the small town of Lexington, Tennessee.
He had gotten a supply of sterile 1-1,500 hydrochloric
acid but had feared using it. His story is as follows: “On August 18,
1931, I found the case to use hydrochloric acid. Five days before I
had delivered a girl of 15 after a prolonged and difficult labor using
all possible aseptic precautions possible in a log cabin in the woods.
The large baby lived only two hours. In spite of the small size of the
mother (she weighed only 90 lbs.), lacerations were small in size. Three
days later a message was sent to me that she had had a chill and a very
high fever. It was a long trip to the river bottom where she lived so
I suspected malaria and I sent quinine.
On the fifth day another message came telling of the
grave condition of the patient and that my immediate presence was necessary.
On going into the room, I saw that there had been no mistake in this
urgent message. The little girl was delirious; temperature 106, pulse
140, respiration was 40; discharge from the vagina that was fetid in
odor. Every other case in the condition in which I found her had died
of this infection.
With much trepidation I gave her an injection of 10cc
of 1-1,500 hydrochloric acid. The following minutes were anxious ones
for me, as I hardly knew what to expect as this was the first time that
I had ever heard of acid being used in puerperal sepsis. The reports
that I had seen of Dr. Ferguson’s cases were of pyrogenic infections
in gunshot or lacerated wounds. As I sat by that bed holding the radial
pulse in that lonely log cabin, a flood of memories of teachings concerning
the fatal consequences of injections of acid into the veins came over
me. While in this frame of mind I noticed sweat on the neck and forehead
of the patient and along with it a slowing of the pulse and in a few
minutes more she was bathed in a profuse perspiration. With it there
was a cessation of the chatter of her delirium.
Thirty minutes following the injection of the acid I
asked her how she felt. She said that she felt much better and she would
like to go to sleep. Within one hour the temperature had dropped to
103, the pulse to 100 and the respiration to 22.
During the following four days, I injected the acid
every day and on the fifth day temperature was 99, pulse was 72 and
respiration was 22. Two days thereafter, I was called again and was
told that the fever had returned. Found her with a temperature of 101,
with a free discharge from the vagina. I gave her another injection
as before. Save for weakness, all evidence of infection had disappeared
the next day. She went on to an uneventful recovery with a complete
disappearance of the mass in the left iliac region.”
So here was a case where the patient was marked for
death soon and within moments of one intravenous infusion of 1-1,500
hydrochloric acid, the patient showed dramatic improvement. Was there
ever a case where an antibiotic drug was so quickly effective?
It is suggested that if bacterial infections are again
treated with infusions of hydrochloric acid, it will be found that there
is no such thing as a bacterium resistant to hydrochloric acid.
In 1932 there was very little that could be done for
the pain and suffering of a patient with a gonorrheal infection of the
testicles. Dr. Howell reported that by then Dr. Ferguson had told him
that treatment with intravenous infusions of hydrochloric acid was effective
in treating any and all bacterial infections. In that year he was referred
to such a patient. Dr. Howell said that after all of his training it
seemed foolish to do an injection in the arm for a swollen and painful
testicle. After the first injection of hydrochloric acid the patient
had pain relief. This patient had a complete recovery from the infection
following eight daily injections. He added that in time he had seen
a few other cases of epididymitis the same as this one, and they all
responded to injections of hydrochloric acid just as had this one.
With the escalating cost of medical treatment how nice
it would be to replace expensive antibiotics with dilute hydrochloric
acid, the cost of which is nil.
Many antibiotics are greatly immunosuppressive and anything
that is immunosuppressive will tend to cause cancer. How much better
it would be to replace immunosuppressive antibiotics with immunostimulating
infusions of hydrochloric acid in treating bacterial infections.
Wayne Martin
25 Orchard Drive
Fairhope, Alabama 36532 USA
334-928-3975
Fax 334-928-0150