Healing Earths: The Third Leg of Medicine

Other medications also cure cholera now, and thus clay is not the most modern remedy. The continual vast increase in medical knowledge since about 1850 makes the therapeutics of any generation seem absurd to the second succeeding generation, but clay can still heal.

There are two noteworthy points to make here: According to the World Health Organization's predictions, almost 2.5 million humans, mostly children, will die of diarrheal diseases per year even unto the year 2020 (Murray, 1992). The second point is that today, worldwide (purchased by me in the US and in Germany) is a prominent antidiarrheal tablet, marketed by a major pharmaceutical company, consisting of 75% clay, in the USA containing a clay called attapulgite or palygorskite (essentially aluminum silicates) and in Germany a clay called kaolin, the white fine Chinese porcelain earth also known as Bolus alba³. These tablets are available on every drug store shelf nowhere near alternative medicines, and in Germany you can still purchase Bolus alba and have prescription of clay suspended in acetic acid (essigsaure Tonerde) prepared for you to alleviate sprains. You can purchase the white earth Bolus alba and use it to brush teeth and gums deeply and cleanly. Hence clay is available today and not a faraway promise of biogenetic engineering. In my youth, the vinegar and clay mixture was a staple at home. Today I brush teeth and gums once a week with a relative of Bolus alba-Bentonite or sodium montmorillonite to polish stains and to reach and clean deep gum pockets.

Another "earth"

It was made prominent in the 17th century as moonmilk, natural cave calcium carbonate from Switzerland, and was used as an antacid and a remedy for an upset stomach caused by overindulgence in food and drink. Today calcium carbonate is still a 50% ingredient in a diarrheal over-the-counter medication for adults as well as for children. 400 years ago it was shipped by the cartload from its Swiss cave to consumers throughout Europe . Today calcium carbonate is still a fifty percent ingredient in a diarrheal over-the-counter medication for adults as well as for children while the name moonmilk has receded into glossaries of geology.

Three thousand years ago, clay and calcium carbonate cured the same afflictions (Holland, 1977). They did not then and do not now cure any of the avid and spurious claims promoted for them. Nowadays physicians consider clay, calcium carbonate, and gypsum with disdain if they know about their medical usefulness at all.

Doctors consider dirt on wounds as anathema, but we must distance ourselves from the notion that sand, clay, mud and other earths must be dirty. There is nothing inherently dirty about minerals that unwashed vegetables or meats do not exhibit either. And using dirt internally? Forget the notion that minerals are dirty just because digging in earth makes our hands "dirty." Earths, as other medications, must be cleaned, sifted, and sterilized. Almost all staple antidiarrhea medicines fall into the category of "earths."

In 1667, 1869 and 1898, so medical literature informs us, treatment with a mineral cured deep, old, suppurating, and evil smelling ulcers of the tibia (generally the shinbone, the inner and larger of the two bones of the lower leg) within 2 weeks with bandages of medicinal earth. Each was publicized in print as prominent in the development of medical practice of its time. In 1667 it was calcium carbonate, in 1869 it was a yellow clay, in 1898 it was a white clay.

In the 4th, 17th, and the early 20th century, the newest invention was to blow powdered clay into noses and other body orifices to stop bleeding or evil smelling secretions. The Roman physician Priscianus (Meyer, Th., 1909) did it in the late 4th century, Johann Daniel Major (Major, 1667) did it in the 17th, Trumpp (1909) reported it early in the 20th.

In the 16th century 2 separate tests were made at two separate noble houses with terra sigillata as anti-poison for mercury sublimate (a test on a human) and for three vegetable poisons (test on 6 dogs). The success of these tests (the human survived, the three dogs also receiving the antidote survived) had been verified at two German state archives (see Chapter eighteen).

Chapter 10, page 75: The history of Lemnian earth goes back to 900 BC, to Homer's Odyssey, wherein Homer mentions terra sigillata, which cured Philoctetes of pestilence (?) at Lemnos by the earth sacred to the Temple of Asklepios. Hippocrates was silent on Lemnian earth because it was associated with religious cultism, while he acknowledged other earths: Alum, argilla, bolus rubra and alba, argilla fullorum (fullers’ earth); he mentions cancer astacus the river crayfish that supplied the calcium carbonate pellets called oculi cancri later (Upman, 1847, p. 422,423, 435).

Dioscorides

Dioscorides of Anazerbos⁵ reported that the Lemnian earth comes from a certain hollow cavern in an area having a marshy place or surroundings [this is correct] and that the clay, after it had been dug, was mixed with goats' blood [this is incorrect], after which the men [not the priestesses?] made it into flat round disks and sealed it with the figure of the goat. The clay was said to have the eminent faculty as antidote against deadly poisons when drunk with wine soon after, which caused vomiting up the poison. It is good against strokes, it is good for bites of venomous beasts, and it is also good for diarrhea (Berendes 1902, p. 638). At least the last is believable today, defeating heavy metal poisoning probably is possible, resisting or defeating snake venom is a dubious claim. It would need external application same as insect bites.

There is no record that Dioscorides, the unquestioned pope of herbals for 1500 years, himself visited the island of Lemnos. Galen of Pergamum, the unquestioned pope of medicine also for 1500 years, did twice. The first time his ship had landed at Kastro (now Myrina). He was too far from the site of the clay digging (about 35 km) and the ship’s captain did not want to wait for Galen traveling there and back. During the second trip, Galen’s ship landed in the Gulf of Bournia and Galen was able to visit the site and at the correct time to observe the clay being dug. When he asked the priestesses about the goats' blood, the priestesses laughed: "No, there is none added". People could obtain coins made of this earth in return for a gift of wheat. Galen acquired 5,000 pieces (some sources say 20,000), but the only report on any medical use of these was that it supposedly alleviated the stomach problems of Marcus Aurelius in the field camp at Aquilega.