Oxygen/Ozone: A Brief History
Medical ozone has been used to disinfect and treat disease for more than 150 years. It has been estimated that over 10 million people have been given oxygen therapies over the past seventy years to treat over 300 different conditions. Oxygen/Ozone therapies are administered alone or they are used in addition to traditional medical and dental procedures. Although used by millions of patients in Europe since the early 1960’s, the therapeutic use of medical ozone is largely a mystery to North Americans.
Oxygen/Ozone therapy has a long history of research and clinical application. A German chemist, C.D. Schonbein, discovered ozone in 1840. Oxygen/Ozone was used in the 1850’s to disinfect operating rooms in European hospitals and decades later to clean municipal water supplies. Today, the majority of bottled drinking water is purified by ozone. The ability of ozone to inactivate bacterial contamination has made it the non-chemical alternative to chlorination with over 3,000 municipalities around the world using ozone to clean water and sewage.
The first medical application of Oxygen/Ozone was in 1870 when Dr. C. Lender used Oxygen/Ozone to purify blood in test tubes.
The medical use of Oxygen/Ozone became widespread in the early 1900’s in Europe when Oxygen/Ozone was used with excellent results for a variety of conditions including skin diseases, gangrene, burns, trench foot and influenza. In 1920, Dr. T.H. Oliver reported the clinical uses of Bio-Oxidative therapies in the Lancet, a highly respected medical journal. As of 1929, more than 114 diseases were listed for treatment with Oxygen/Ozone therapy. Around the same time, a Swiss dentist, Dr. E.A. Fisch introduced the concept of Oxygen/Ozone in dentistry and published numerous papers on the subject. In 1931, Dr. Otto Warburg won his first Nobel Prize for his discovery that the fundamental cause of all degenerative disease is a condition called hypoxia (oxygen starvation at the cellular level). In 1944, Dr. Warburg won his second Nobel Prize for his work linking cancer to damaged cell respiration caused by a lack of oxygen and a buildup of toxicity. In the 1950’s, through the efforts of Dr. J. Hansler in Germany, modern materials including resistant plastics and the development of modern ozone generators made it possible to safely handle and administer medical ozone.
Bio-Oxidative therapies are currently being studied in major medical research centers in the U.S. and throughout the therapy with doctors in over 20 countries throughout the world using it to treat infection. Oxygen/Ozone therapy is currently being used in Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Romania, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and in 4 Canadian provinces.