Sulphur-fume-acidulated water (dilute mineral acid)

mineral

provenance:mineral

first introduced:1887

regulatory status:unregulated

context:William Radam's Microbe Killer, sold from Austin, Texas. Radam's US patent 412,664 (1889) describes the manufacture: burning a sulphur-based compound and passing the fumes through water in a closed tank until the liquid takes on 'a sour acid taste'.

MECHANISM CLAIMED

A gas-charged water that destroys the microbes responsible for every disease, while remaining a harmless, non-poisonous drink that nourishes the system and purifies the blood when taken freely.

MECHANISM ACTUAL

Passing the fumes from burning sulphur (with sodium nitrate, manganese oxide, and other matter, per the patent process reported by Barnett) through water yields a dilute aqueous solution of sulphurous and sulphuric acid, which is why the patent specifies glass, slate, and wooden fittings and 'no metal ... owing to its liability to be affected by the acids generated'. A chemical analysis by R.G. Eccles found the liquid to be water with minute amounts of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid; an analysis attributed to the US Department of Agriculture, as reported by Barnett, placed the water content at 99.381 percent. At the dilute, drinkable concentrations sold, the acid has no systemic germicidal action: a liquid weak enough to swallow safely cannot sterilize the blood or tissues, and ingested acid is neutralized in the gut rather than circulating to kill micro-organisms throughout the body.

INTERVENTIONS USING IT

Wm. Radam's Microbe Killer

NOTES

The “active” substance in Wm. Radam’s Microbe Killer was not a drug but treated water. Radam’s own patent for the manufacturing apparatus (US 412,664, 1889) describes impregnating water with “the fumes emanating from the consumption of a combustible composition of matter, such as sulphur,” in a brick-and-cement tank lined with glass and slate and fitted with wooden faucets, because metal would be eaten by “the acids generated in using the apparatus.” The process imparts “a sour acid taste to the liquid in from four to twenty-four hours, according to the strength I desire to attain.” In his 1890 book Radam described the result as “pure water, permeated with gases.”

What this produces is a very dilute solution of sulphurous and sulphuric acid in water, lightly tinted (Barnett reports a little wine was added for a pink cast). The chemist and pharmacist R.G. Eccles analysed the Microbe Killer and reported it to be water with only minute quantities of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid; an analysis attributed to the US Department of Agriculture, as later recounted by Barnett, put the water content at 99.381 percent. The claimed mechanism, that this liquid kills the microbes that cause all disease, fails on basic grounds: an acid weak enough to be drunk by the glassful, including by infants, is far too weak to act as a systemic germicide, and swallowed acid is neutralized in the digestive tract rather than carried through the bloodstream to destroy micro-organisms in the tissues. The ingredient is recorded here as the surrogate-mechanism material at the centre of the case, a near-inert acidulated water sold as a universal antiseptic.