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HISTORY OF IODINE
The discovery of iodine, like most discoveries, was a fortuitous
accident. The most fortuitous accident in the history of
medicine, is one story many of us are familiar with: the discovery
of penicillin.
We’ve all heard the stories of the mold ruining the cultures
and how suddenly, a mind shift occurred and bingo, the birth
of antibiotics. Few realize that penicillin had been discovered
a
lot earlier, back in the late 1800’s by a medical student.
But, sadly, the world wasn’t ready for it and, the haughtiness
of physicians at that time would not allow them to look upon
a mere student’s discovery with more than condescending
curiosity. Even fewer are aware that Pasteur discovered and
wrote up the first
antibiotic experiment, in which he watched a substance gobble
up his bacteria specimens. That "substance" was garlic.
In
1811 when Bernard Courtois (1777-1838) discovered iodine,
he was not searching for a way to heal his fellow humans. On
the contrary;
he was looking for a way to kill his fellow humans. Napoleon’s
army at the time required huge quantities of gunpowder and
supplies were running short. Saltpeter (potassium nitrate—KNO3—sometimes
spelled saltpeter) is a major component in gunpowder and requires
an abundant source of sodium carbonate to be manufactured.
Sodium carbonate is extracted from wood ashes, but the war
had gone on
so long that they’d run out of willow wood, the preferred
source. Someone suggested using dried seaweed (burnt to ash),
which seemed to be abundant off the coasts of Normandy and
Brittany. The suggestion worked and the French were back
in business, making
gunpowder and killing people.
However, in the process of making
saltpeter, excess sulfur compounds were created and they
had to add sulfuric acid
to the mixture
to get rid of them. Courtois accidentally added a bit too
much acid
one day, and poof, a violet vapor cloud appeared and condensed
onto the colder, metal objects and formed lustrous crystals.
Courtois, a working chemist, realized he’d created
something new. He performed a few minor experiments with
this new substance
and noted
that it combined well with phosphorous, hydrogen, and a few
metals, but did not combine easily with oxygen or carbon.
Furthermore,
he discovered that it was quite explosive when mixed with
ammonia and did not decompose when burned.
He suspected he’d
discovered a new element, but the war (Napoleon having stretched
the government’s coffers to the point of
bankruptcy) was the focus of France’s spending at the
time, and without funding, he could experiment no further.
Besides, there
was a war to fight. So he turned his discovery over to the
French chemist (and physicist) Charles-Bernard Désormes
(1777-1862), who, with the help of his son-in-law Nicolas
Clément (1779-1841)
performed the scientific investigation into this new element.
Courtous,
for some reason, also gave samples to Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac
(1778-1850) and André M. Ampère (1775–1836).
Both
teams went to work investigating this new substance and in
November of 1813, at a meeting of the Imperial Institute
of France,
Désormes and Clément announced their discovery.
A few days later Gay-Lussac and André M. Ampère
published that this was either an element or a compound of
oxygen. No one
yet, knew for sure exactly what it was, until the English
chemist Sir Humphry Davy got into the picture (you might
recall Davy as
being the Father of Stoners in our essay The
History of Anesthesia)
and did some experiments with samples given him by Ampère.
Davy
published, on the 10th of December, 1813, a little piece
in which he described this substance's qualities as being
similar to chlorine, and that it was quite analogous to both
Fluorine and Chlorine. He named it Iodine from a Greek word for "violet
colored" but the hubbub did not stop there. Suddenly
the priority rights over the substance were in dispute (who
did what first and so on) while both Gay-Lussac and Davy acknowledged that Courtois was the discoverer.
Later, Jean Lugol discovered that bonding
iodine to a mineral (potassium) made it water soluble, and
allowed for the later
discovery of iodine’s
antiseptic qualities. Iodine naturally dissolves in alcohol,
but not in water until it is first bonded to the elements
potassium or chlorine.
The use of antiseptics, the general
use of antiseptics and acceptance of the theory of germs,
was far off. Iodine made
it’s leap
into medical history when a Swiss physician, Dr Jean François
Condet announced that iodine could reduce goiters (enlarged
thyroids).
At this moment, modern medical science is born.
For the first time in history we have a specific disorder
that is relieved
by a specific
treatment, which was discovered through empirical reasoning
(experimentation based upon trial and error).
Please note:
this treatment is a nutritional substance. The human body was
designed to ingest minerals from the sea.
This is nutritional
medicine, not chemical medicine. Please note this, because
medicine abandons this mind set later when … well,
you’ll
have to see when.
Iodine suddenly became hip and people consumed it till
they turned blue in the gills. It was a powerful stimulant
loaded
with uncomfortable
side effects and when a group of under-worked physicians,
with little to do, got together, the first regulations
of medicine
were initiated and iodine became a semi-controlled substance.
Like most
controlled substances, the controllers knew very little
about the substance they were controlling and for the sake
of the
public safety, they came up with an off-the-wall RYA (Required
Yearly
Amount) for iodine that had nothing to do with empirical
science. Just one more example of people with control issues
thinking
they
know what’s best for you and me. Luckily, a true
scientist, with an appropriate name to boot, in 1917, published
his findings
on the study of thyroids in fish, dogs, and humans found
in the Great Lakes region. His name was David Marine. He
discovered that
the amount of iodine our medical authorities had limited
we humans to in a year’s period was most likely the
amount our bodies needed in a two week period. The medical
establishment poo-pooed
these findings, and Marine’s work has never been
endorsed by the medical establishment. Keeping humans ill
is profitable
for drug companies, and by 1917 pharmaceuticals were the
most profitable business around and growing faster than
a forest fire
in a wind
storm after a ten-year drought.
But it was an Indian (from
India) who is credited with ushering Iodine into the Medical
Hall of Fame. His name
is Sunker
Bisey. He won a contest run by an English Manufacturing
firm in which
the winner would get a full scholarship at a major British
university. Bisey boarded a ship to jolly old England,
waved goodbye to his
family, but never made it to the university. Arriving in
England dying of Malaria, he was treated to the best physicians
the
British Isles had to offer, but to no avail, and he soon
opted to die in
his homeland, and set sail. At a stopover in France where
firing up kilns of seaweed was now the latest craze, someone
suggested
treating the dying lad with Iodine. Long story short: Bisey
finished his education in England and set sail for New
York where he intended
on bringing this magnificent new treatment for disease
to the world.
He had some minor successes with local physicians,
but nothing to write home about. In 1927, out of total frustration,
he
wrote a letter to a crackpot psychic and requested a
reading on iodine.
When he received his reply, it brought tears to his eyes,
according to Phil Thomas, an Edgar Cayce historian. The
letter confirmed
Bisey’s overall assertions and outlined an electrification
process by which the iodine could be exposed to a magnetic
field while suspended in a wet battery; a process that
would transmute
the iodine into a state the body could fully recognize
and fully assimilate.
As Phil Thomas writes in his paper "IODINE — The
Once A Century Element,"
Sunker Bisey wasted no time in assembling the necessary
equipment and running the experiment. Having worked with
the element
for many years he knew instantly, upon tasting the detoxified
form
that Mr. Cayce's suggestion had finally cracked the coded
mystery of the once unruly element. He set about replacing
the raw
form with the new iodine … and within days he started
hearing back positive reports of his new found discovery.
In the months
and years which followed thousands of people were routinely
cured of a wide assortment of ailments, most of which
had no viable treatment … prior
to the advent of atomic iodine.
Now here is where the
story goes sour. I’m not big on conspiracy
theories, so I’ll let you construct your own conclusions.
Sunker
Bisey built up his iodine empire because he had no competition.
His simple, inexpensive nutritional therapy
was all the rage.
Edgar Cayce did more readings on iodine, especially his
new
form which
had such names as Detoxified Iodine and Atomic Iodine,
but eventually would be called Atomidine. But there was
only
one person marketing
this form of iodine and he was about to be put out of
business. Put out of business by the Government.
Gee,
I seem to recall a tenth amendment and something to do with
restriction of free trade.
The government, in it’s almighty
wisdom, decided to iodize salt. This would guarantee that every
American got their daily
requirements for iodine. The amount the government
would require to go into salt was not based upon David Marine’s
research (which was scientific) but rather it was based upon
the 100 year
old recommendations by that group of busybody physicians
with few patients to treat and way too much time on their hands.
The required
daily amount (RDA) of iodine is just enough to keep
our thyroids from expanding, not unlike the RDA of vitamin
C today which is
just enough to keep us free of scurvy, but not enough
to prevent a pre scurvy disorder known as CVD, or Cardiovascular
Disease.
(See our publication Bypassing
Bypass).
The average
American was lulled into a false state of security and Bisey’s
business eventually crashed. He died a pauper in 1935, passing
on his business, what was left of it, a few notes
and lots of Atomidine no one wanted, onto his son.
His son, who apparently had no interest in following in his
father’s
footsteps (and die a pauper), turned around and
sold the process to a pharmaceutical
company that immediately buried it and forgot about
it.
Even Edgar Cayce quit doing readings about Atomidine
since it was no longer available, but near the
end of his life,
he resurrected
a slew of iodine readings and introduced a theory
of "vibrational" medicine
that many are still investigating to this day.
For more on Edgar Cayce, how he’s been
labeled a quack by some and a prophet by others,
see: Edgar
Cayce.
From the Cayce readings, we
get this:
Knowing the tendencies, supply in the vital energies
that ye call the vitamins, or elements. For,
remember, while
we give
many combinations,
there are only four elements in your body, -
water, salt, soda and iodine. These are the basic
elements,
they make
all the
rest! Each vitamin as a component part of an
element is simply a combination
of these other influences, given a name mostly
for confusion to individuals, by those who would
tell
you what to do
for a price.
This is an amazing statement, laughed
at by the so-called scientific community, but investigated
by others.
Scientific types will
tell you that water, salt, and soda (calcium
carbonate) are not elements,
while iodine is. Cayce was not an educated man.
Recordings of his readings are hard to understand
at times,
because he went into
a trance. In other words, he was asleep and sounded
oftentimes like someone talking in his sleep.
When he uses the word
element, he is not using a chemistry denotation,
but rather a loose
connotation.
He often said that three or four
drops of Atomidine three or four times a week were all you
needed to stay healthy.
How
much exactly?
That’s hard to determine since it's your
body that needs it at your levels and not at
mine or your neighbors’.
How much? Where
can you find it? What does it do? Well, lucky
you, my dear reader. Allow
me
to review
for you
some bottles
I received
from two different companies. Click here to
read the: Review of Atomidine.
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