Using the Power of Oxygen to Maintain Health Series
Even though it may seem new, Ozone therapy in the field of alternative wellness is not actually “new”. Use for Ozone has been known of since ancient times, in fact, in Greek “ozein” means “smelling gas”. The medical use of ozone has a long history as a health therapy, dating back to 1785 with a Dutch physician, inventor, scientist and teacher, Martinez Van Marum. While working with electrostatic machines, Martinez noticed a peculiar odor being generated by the equipment, where the equipment’s electrical charges reacted with the room air to produce ozone.
Years later in 1840, German physician Christian Friedrich Schönbein synthesized ozone in his laboratory and described exactly what it was in his paper, “The production of ozone by chemical means”. In 1857, Werner von Siemens, one of the brightest pioneers in electrical science, built the first ozone generating electrode. In 1870, Dr. Lender a German physician, published a paper describing how effective ozone was for blood and water sterilization. In 1873, 70 years before antibiotics, German physicians discovered that ozone was a potent anti-microbial agent and in 1881 ozone began being used as a disinfectant.
Around 1895, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of Kellogg’s corn flakes, used ozone as an anti-infectious medication in his book on diphtheria. Nikola Tesla founded the Tesla Ozone Company, the world’s first manufacturer of ozone generators for medical use.
Tesla’s creation of the ozone generators led Dr. Thauerkauf and Dr. Luth, two German physicians, to start the Institute of Oxygen-Ozone Therapy where the first animal studies on the medical use of ozone. In the United States, 10 years later in 1911, Dr. Noble Eberhart created the first university program teaching ozone therapy. He discussed using ozone to treat tuberculosis, anemia, tinnitus, whooping cough, asthma, bronchitis, hay fever, insomnia, pneumonia, diabetes, gout and syphilis.
In 1915 Dr. Wolf, chief surgeon of the medical services of the German army and author of the Medical Ozone, started using ozone therapy to treat infected wounds, frost bite, gangrene and decubitus ulcers.
Ozone therapy has history in dentistry. In 1932 Dr. Fish, a Swiss dentist, published a paper describing how ozone could be used to treat dental caries. This led to him to patented the Cytozon, the first device specifically to treat dental caries.
In 1957, the emergence of plastics resistant to ozone lead Dr. Hansler, a German physician to manufacture the first modern ozone generator that modern day medical generators are based. In 1980 Dr. Hansler’s daughter wrote a book called “The Medical Use of Ozone” that describes many local and systemic applications of ozone therapy that were developed in Germany over the previous century.
Today, almost all of the world’s water systems use ozone to purify the water. The use of ozone in therapy began to take shape in the early 20th century, primarily in Europe. In the United States, ozone therapy became more widely utilized in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
In 2010, the Internation Scientific Committee on Ozone (ISCO3) was formed with some of the most influential scientists and practitioners of ozone in the world. In the same year ISCO3 compiled “The Madrid Declaration” which served as the first standard for ozone therapy being revised in 2015 with instructions for every kind of ozone application currently used in the international medical community. Afterwards, The American Academy of Ozonotherapy (AAO) was formed to standardize and promote the medical practice of ozone in the United States. AAO is one of the fastest growing medical academies in the United States.
As you can see even though the medical use of ozone is relatively unknown here in the United States, it is not because there isn’t a rich history for its use.
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