IV Charcoal Cures Infections

[Nokoni]

Amazing paper from 1934. Doctor used IV injections of charcoal to cure infections. He apparently tried it on everyone that showed up with infection of whatever type, and had a cure rate of 97%. He used a 2% solution of charcoal in distilled water, and administered a few cc’s of it per day. After using it on 150 patients he had “not one single untoward sequel”. “The procedure was perfectly innocuous.”
INTRAVENOUS INJECTIONS OF ANIMAL CHARCOAL IN THE TREATMENT OF VARIED INFECTIONS: A CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY. - PubMed - NCBI (Free PMC article.)

The guy’s name was Dr. Eugene St. Jacques, and in 1938 he was awarded the Montyon Prize from the Academy of Sciences in Paris “for his treatment of acute infections by intravenous carbon [charcoal].”
Dr. Eugene St. Jacques

If this isn’t fraud it would seem to be a near panacea. Has anyone ever heard of using IV charcoal to cure infection?

 

[Soren]

I never have heard of this before but I am a bit concerned with such a treatment. Since charcoal doesn't breakdown in the body very easily seems to me that this could result in clogging blood vessels with particles of carbon.

I'm a big fan of activated charcoal has helped me hold back many infections and reviver faster but not sure about injecting it into the bloodstream. Sounds risky.

 

[Nokoni]

I never have heard of this before but I am a bit concerned with such a treatment. Since charcoal doesn't breakdown in the body very easily seems to me that this could result in clogging blood vessels with particles of carbon.

I'm a big fan of activated charcoal has helped me hold back many infections and reviver faster but not sure about injecting it into the bloodstream. Sounds risky.

Sounds risky to me too. But the good doctor never got a bad reaction, or else he's a fraud.

 

[tara]

I never have heard of this before but I am a bit concerned with such a treatment. Since charcoal doesn't breakdown in the body very easily seems to me that this could result in clogging blood vessels with particles of carbon.

+1

There are plenty of stories about the helpfulness of activated charcoal taken orally or applied as poultice for relieving infections and other conditions.

Injecting insoluble particles into the blood streams seems like a desperate measure for desperate circumstances.

 

[Nokoni]

+1

There are plenty of stories about the helpfulness of activated charcoal taken orally or applied as poultice for relieving infections and other conditions.

Injecting insoluble particles into the blood streams seems like a desperate measure for desperate circumstances.

I totally agree. But the Canadian Medical Association published this article that says this doctor did it, he cured pretty much everyone, and nobody was harmed. It's a huge claim. If it's false, why isn't it debunked? Has anybody ever even heard of such a treatment before?

 

[tara]

I totally agree. But the Canadian Medical Association published this article that says this doctor did it, he cured pretty much everyone, and nobody was harmed. It's a huge claim. If it's false, why isn't it debunked? Has anybody ever even heard of such a treatment before?

I just took a quick glance, not a thorough reading. If you read it thoroughly, you can say if I misunderstood. My impression was that they assessed the results based on the effects on very serious infections within the first few hours or day or two of administering the injections.
They found that it was often helpful in the very short term, in very serious conditions.

There is no assessment about longer term effects.

 

[Nokoni]

I just took a quick glance, not a thorough reading. If you read it thoroughly, you can say if I misunderstood. My impression was that they assessed the results based on the effects on very serious infections within the first few hours or day or two of administering the injections.
They found that it was often helpful in the very short term, in very serious conditions.

There is no assessment about longer term effects.

Here's one quote: "The convincing cases, because the temperature dropped to normal within 48 hours and all were cured. There were 50 belonging to this class, that is 50 per cent." (Italics in original.) He's saying that 50% were cured in 48 hours. He gave one IV injection per day, so after 2 treatments. He's an MD, and he's using the word "cured". Reasonable to assume he knows what the word means, right? In another case he talks about a patient that was cured, then returned to the hospital some time later and had a baby. The claims are his, and they are really big.

 

[tara]

Here's one quote: "The convincing cases, because the temperature dropped to normal within 48 hours and all were cured. There were 50 belonging to this class, that is 50 per cent." (Italics in original.) He's saying that 50% were cured in 48 hours. He gave one IV injection per day, so after 2 treatments. He's an MD, and he's using the word "cured". Reasonable to assume he knows what the word means, right? In another case he talks about a patient that was cured, then returned to the hospital some time later and had a baby. The claims are his, and they are really big.

The paper was published more than 80 years ago.

I presume 'cured' related to the specific severe infections that seemed most urgently health or life-threatening, that he was treating with the charcoal injection.

I guess I don't share your confidence that MDs always know what cured means, but perhaps he did in these cases.

My point was that there could well have been some side-effects from these charcoal injections that were not obvious in the context of this study.

Harm from particles in the blood stream could take more than a day or two to show up at all, and might be more subtle to begin with, especially compared with the serious urgent conditions he was treating. That doesn't prove that it couldn't be a significant issue.

So maybe it made good sense to be treating patients in dire straights at that time with that treatment. But in itself it doesn't mean it's a safe treatment for all contexts - risk/benefit analysis is relevant.

Peat has referred to risks of persorbed of particles from the gut getting into the bloodstream. This is larger scale and deliberate breach of the body's defenses. Not saying there's never a case for it, but before I'd consider it 'safe', I'd be wanting a lot stronger evidence than that paper.

 

[Darshan]

My English is not good, but I have noticed in this publication that there was used verbal return "animal carbon", then " injections of carbon" and then "
animal charcoal in distilled water" or simply "injections of charcoal".
Is not it a bit of a different substance here, where besides carbon are hydroxyapatite, calcium carbonate and a few other things?
I mean bone char (Latin: carbo animalis).

 

[haidut]

Very interesting find. I will look more into it. At least one company has a government-approved charcoal injection product.
Activated Charcoal Injection (Charcotrace™) - Phebra

However, it warns that only small amounts need to be injected and it is meant for local tissue staining only. Since it is injected, some of it will definitely end up in circulation but it is not quite the same as giving charcoal IV in the doses that doctor did.
Here is another study with IV charcoal for treating skin diseases. Also from the 1930s, and it mentions severe allergic reactions, including coma, and other side effects in some of the other studies quoted.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2133.1936.tb10287.x
"...It is to be noted that St.-Jacques (19346, 1935a) observed no untoward effects following animal charcoal injections, while Toiirain(* and Menetrel (1934a) found shock reaction after intravenous animal charcoal, but not after vegetable charcoal. Zorn and Labourgade (1935), however, did not find intravenous animal charcoal beneficial in a series of nine skin cases. Further, they described reactions after charcoal—namely, an indurated, red, warm, painful vein in one case, and shivers, pyrexia and general malaise in other cases."

"...In 6 cases out of 330, intravenous charcoal, either animal or wood, was followed by immediate collapse and a ''shock-like'' reaction. Within two minutes of injection the patient showed cyanosis, dyspnoea, coma, prostration, vomiting, feeble pulse and incontinence. Recovery began in each case within five minutes, and was complete in twelve hours. Collapse occurred only in very feeble patients or with high doses of charcoal. One of these patients was an asthmatic."

The curative effect is likely mostly due to reduction in endotoxin, even though some studies quoted above apparently managed to cure systemic infections as well. Overall, very interesting approach, but there needs to be a lot more studies on its safety before it can be recommended. Unfortunately, not much work seems to have happened after the 30s, which is not surprising as this is the period when fascist powers took over medicine and all related research.

 

[Nokoni]

I have trouble with the language too. The author may be French Canadian, so maybe English is not his first language. But also it is more than 80 years old, so the names for some things have changed, and also the style used for research papers is different.

In the Wiki article for "Bone char" it states that "activated carbon" is a modern alternative to bone char, and the "Activated carbon" article says that activated charcoal is another name for activated carbon. So who knows what it really is. But in addition, Dr. St. Jacques gives no guidance about how it was prepared. He talks about dosage, but is it filtered first, etc., etc.?

His treatment is almost miraculously effective, and he did win a science prize in France several years later specifically for this work, but without many further details it's way too risky to try. But if I was dying of an infection that the doctors couldn't treat, which happens every day, I would try inosine, then chlorine dioxide, and if I was still dying, then I'd probably be willing to inject myself with activated charcoal. If there were nothing left to lose, why not?

 

[Makrosky]

I am 100% with what all @tara said.

The term "cured" refers that the infection was cured. No doubting that, it is perfectly feasible. However, long term side effects with that "therapy" are unforeseeable right now and even more in 1938. If it is a life or death situation, of course, yes, I would also do it (what wouldn't one do in life or death situation anyway?).

You can probably cure an infection with large ammounts of copper, silver, mercury, etc... that doesn't mean they are safe.

 

[Nokoni]

Very interesting find. I will look more into it. At least one company has a government-approved charcoal injection product.
Activated Charcoal Injection (Charcotrace™) - Phebra

However, it warns that only small amounts need to be injected and it is meant for local tissue staining only. Since it is injected, some of it will definitely end up in circulation but it is not quite the same as giving charcoal IV in the doses that doctor did.
Here is another study with IV charcoal for treating skin diseases. Also from the 1930s, and it mentions severe allergic reactions and other side effects in some of the other studies quoted.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2133.1936.tb10287.x
"...It is to be noted that St.-Jacques (19346, 1935a) observed no untoward effects following animal charcoal injections, while Toiirain(* and Menetrel (1934a) found shock reaction after intravenous animal charcoal, but not after vegetable charcoal. Zorn and Labourgade (1935), however, did not find intravenous animal charcoal beneficial in a series of nine skin cases. Further, they described reactions after charcoal—namely, an indurated, red, warm, painful vein in one case, and shivers, pyrexia and general malaise in other cases."

The curative effect is likely mostly due to reduction in endotoxin, even though some studies quoted above apparently managed to cure systemic infections as well. Overall, very interesting approach, but there needs to be a lot more studies on its safety before it can be recommended. Unfortunately, not much work seems to have happened after the 30s, which is not surprising as this is the period when fascist powers took over medicine and all related research.

How do you find this stuff? I searched for days for further information about St. Jacques and his work but found almost nothing. Anyhow, thanks, and I too suspect that the whole thing was dropped so as not to adversely affect income for the doctor industry. What else could explain that such a stunning result is neither subsequently debunked nor further researched?

 

[Makrosky]

How do you find this stuff? I searched for days for further information about St. Jacques and his work but found almost nothing. Anyhow, thanks, and I too suspect that the whole thing was dropped so as not to adversely affect income for the doctor industry. What else could explain that such a stunning result is neither subsequently debunked nor further researched?

Activated charcoal is unpatentable. Same as silver, copper, etc... Big Pharma is not interested on things they cannot patent.

Also worth mentioning, sometimes not all is Big Pharma conspiranoia. Antibiotics in tablets/capsules are much more easier to dose, store, administer, more safe, etc... than IV injections. That is probably one of the reasons they shifted the research in those lines. They have saved many more lives that way.

 

[haidut]

How do you find this stuff? I searched for days for further information about St. Jacques and his work but found almost nothing. Anyhow, thanks, and I too suspect that the whole thing was dropped so as not to adversely affect income for the doctor industry. What else could explain that such a stunning result is neither subsequently debunked nor further researched?

It's my black magic tricks
If you find a study on Pubmed you can click the author's name and it will bring up other studies by the same author. Also, the panel on the right will show "related" studies, and those related ones often have really good follow up work on the study you searched for.

 

[Makrosky]

@Nokoni

I like this software for browsing pubmed. It is in the Apple store, Windows and Google Play.
PRIME PubMed | Free PubMed Journal Article Search

You can double the power with this : Easily Download Papers From Sci-Hub

 

[mouse]

It seems like the injected charcoal will end up getting stuck in the lymphatic system, even if tiny.

Tattoo healing: Common risks and what you should know - CNN

A 32-year-old woman with 14 lower body tattoos was being treated for cervical cancer when doctors noticed two swollen lymph glands. Thinking her cancer had spread, they removed the nodes and discovered they were full of tattoo ink particles. In this situation, doctors said they would have operated anyway, but warned that might not always be the case.

In Australia, doctors were treating a woman for a type of cancer called lymphoma. She had lumps under her arms, as well as enlarged lymph nodes near the roots of her lungs, all classic signs of the cancer.
But when they put those nodes under a microscope, they found out it was black tattoo ink placed there 15 years ago. She didn't have cancer; her immune system was reacting to the tattoo on her back.

Another group of researchers studied cadavers with tattoos. In their lymph nodes they found carbon black ink, which breaks down easily into microscopically tiny bits called nanoparticles. They also found larger particles of titanium dioxide, a common ingredient in white ink. White ink is often used to mix tattoo colors.

 

[tankasnowgod]

It seems like the injected charcoal will end up getting stuck in the lymphatic system, even if tiny.

Tattoo healing: Common risks and what you should know - CNN

A 32-year-old woman with 14 lower body tattoos was being treated for cervical cancer when doctors noticed two swollen lymph glands. Thinking her cancer had spread, they removed the nodes and discovered they were full of tattoo ink particles. In this situation, doctors said they would have operated anyway, but warned that might not always be the case.

In Australia, doctors were treating a woman for a type of cancer called lymphoma. She had lumps under her arms, as well as enlarged lymph nodes near the roots of her lungs, all classic signs of the cancer.
But when they put those nodes under a microscope, they found out it was black tattoo ink placed there 15 years ago. She didn't have cancer; her immune system was reacting to the tattoo on her back.

Another group of researchers studied cadavers with tattoos. In their lymph nodes they found carbon black ink, which breaks down easily into microscopically tiny bits called nanoparticles. They also found larger particles of titanium dioxide, a common ingredient in white ink. White ink is often used to mix tattoo colors.

I don't think Tattoo Ink is similar to Activated Charcoal. Ink will frequently contain all sorts of heavy metals. I would also think there would be major differences between IV administration and Tattoo Ink into the skin.

 

[mouse]

I don't think Tattoo Ink is similar to Activated Charcoal. Ink will frequently contain all sorts of heavy metals. I would also think there would be major differences between IV administration and Tattoo Ink into the skin.

Traditional black tattoo ink can be made from carbon black, which isn't activated charcoal but it may be the closest analogy for this topic. Tattoo ink isn't supposed to go into circulation, but whatever did enter the circulatory system in these people ended up in the lymphatic system. Do you have any evidence that IV charcoal would behave differently?

 

[tankasnowgod]

Traditional black tattoo ink can be made from carbon black, which isn't activated charcoal but it may be the closest analogy for this topic. Tattoo ink isn't supposed to go into circulation, but whatever did enter the circulatory system in these people ended up in the lymphatic system. Do you have any evidence that IV charcoal would behave differently?

I don't. but you have no evidence that it would act similarly. Tattoo Ink would likely leach into lymph nodes over years and decades. IV charcoal would undergo passes through the liver and kidneys in a matter of hours. Even the most negative cases listed above resolved within 12 hours.

Even the article you linked mentions some of the more heavy metals used in tattoo inks found in lymph nodes-

"Their most disturbing discovery, however, was toxic heavy metals in the lymph nodes, including cobalt, nickel and chromium. Heavy metals are sometimes added to tattoo pigment as preservatives."

Wikipedia lists a number of potentially toxic substances found in tattoo inks- Tattoo ink - Wikipedia

"Manufacturers are not required to reveal their ingredients or conduct trials, and recipes may be proprietary. Professional inks may be made from iron oxides (rust), metal salts, or plastics.[5] Homemade or traditional tattoo inks may be made from pen ink, soot, dirt, blood, or other ingredients.[2][6]

Heavy metals used for colors include mercury (red); lead (yellow, green, white); cadmium (red, orange, yellow); nickel (black); zinc (yellow, white); chromium (green); cobalt (blue); aluminium (green, violet); titanium (white); copper (blue, green); iron (brown, red, black); and barium (white). Metal oxides used include ferrocyanide and ferricyanide (yellow, red, green, blue). Organic chemicals used include azo-chemicals (orange, brown, yellow, green, violet) and naptha-derived chemicals (red). Carbon (soot or ash) is also used for black. Other elements used as pigments include antimony, arsenic, beryllium, calcium, lithium, selenium, and sulphur.[4][6]

Tattoo ink manufacturers typically blend the heavy metal pigments and/or use lightening agents (such as lead or titanium) to reduce production costs.[6]"

Unlikely to find all those elements in significant concentration in Activated Charcoal.