Showing posts with label tuberculosis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tuberculosis. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2024

BYSTRIANYK: Tuberculosis cured with… wait for it… vegetable juice.

Tuberculosis cured with… wait for it… vegetable juice.

A 1905 article in the New York Times discussed a cure for tuberculosis that was developed by Dr. Russell. His treatment was vegetable juices, which cured patients who suffered from active tuberculosis.
“Dr. Russell says he has found a combination of foods which seems effective in the destruction of the bacilli of tuberculosis. The most beneficial item in the food combination—consisting of butter, bread, eggs, milk, and emulsion—is, he says, vegetable juices. Since the introduction of this juice the report records remarkable results among the tuberculosis patients. The fluid, which Dr. Russell and his colleagues at the Post-Graduate believe to have beneficial properties, is the combined juice of every kind of vegetable to be had in the market. It has been in regular use at the hospital along with the regular diet since Jan. 7. It is now recorded that in the first five months of this year eleven patients were discharged “apparently cured,” against a record number of thirteen cures effected during the whole of 1904. This sudden increase, and the fact that the patients are still thriving upon the vegetable-juice treatment, lead the examiners to believe that Dr. Russell has discovered a fluid, the properties of which are fatal to the progress of tuberculosis... The vegetables first used were potato, onion, beet, turnip, cabbage, and celery. Later were added sweet potato, apple, pineapple, carrot, parsnip, and later still rhubarb, (pieplant), summer squash, tomato, spinach, radishes, string beans, and green peas with the pods.”

[“Vegetable Juice a New Consumption Remedy, Tried with Success at Post-Graduate Hospital, 11 Believed to be Cured,” New York Times, August 25, 1905.]

Sunday, June 9, 2024

ROMAN BYSTRIANYK: Why did tuberculosis fall as a massive killer from the 1800s into the mid-1900s before antibiotics or a vaccine were available? By the way, TB was a far far bigger killer than measles, whooping cough, or smallpox

Why did tuberculosis fall as a massive killer from the 1800s into the mid-1900s before antibiotics or a vaccine were available? By the way, TB was a far far bigger killer than measles, whooping cough, or smallpox (see the relatively tiny bit at the bottom of the chart – that’s smallpox). [Massachusetts Deaths White Plague (Tuberculosis) Deaths Per 100,000, 1861 to 1970.]