TOPIC:

DILUTE HYDROCHLORIC ACID INTRAVENOUSLY AND INTRAMUSCULARLY
By DESIDIERIUS DE BESZEDITS, M.D.
Former President of the Federal Sanitary Brigade in the
District of Tlaxiaco, State of Oaxaca, Mexico

One outstanding, highly beneficial, naturally progressive result of the past series of Mexican revolutions and consequent revindications, was the establishment of the most modernly organized federal health department, the Mexican Federal Public Health Service, located in a large American-style modern building, occupying a whole city block in the capital of the Mexican republic, in delightful Mexico City, so well and favorably known to thousands of American tourists. The men at the head of each department, as well as their co-workers, are physicians and surgeons of the highest standing, who, while relatively well paid, could earn at least double their salaries in private practice. This fact alone displays their unselfish patriotic service to their country and to humanity.

The government, the strongest and best Mexico has ever had, leaves a large budget and practically free hands to these professionals to handle the country's health service in the most up-to-date and efficient manner, which they do to the best of their ability. This health department has its physicians in every state of the republic, doing excellent work in the interest of public health and hygiene.

Yet Mexico is a very large country, abounding in regions sparsely settled, lacking ways of communication, our only locomotion for traveling and freight hauling in these regions (more than half of the country's territory) being on the backs of our sure-footed patient little burros or their stronger and more modern cousins: the mule and, more rarely, the horse.

The fact that from our headquarters town it takes us four or five days to reach the nearest railway or a day or two of forced mule-back ride to attend a call and reach a hut or shack with its "moribundo" inhabitant, makes us only more wakeful and appreciative of our wonderfully picturesque surroundings; also more thankful to great nature, and with lots of time to think and meditate during these long, slow trips, it brings us nearer to God, and, all in all, with the infinite silence and solitude, makes us a better man and .... decidedly a better doctor!

Far away from ordinary civilization, still farther away from hospitals, laboratories or even nurse service, more isolated yet by months of "rainy season," content to read week-old newspapers, reading and rereading and reading again every word of THE MEDICAL WORLD and other journals, and everything readable we can lay our hands upon, informed and keeping up with the times somehow, an ideal situation to work out real complicated jig-saw puzzles, medical and otherwise!

Then comes an "urgent" call-brought by some friendly neighbor who had traveled for a couple of days on foot as the crow flies. Up here in the Sierra Madre, in a most primitive log-cabin-like affair, of the poorest charcoal matier native, set out over almost impenetrable mountain gorges with such a narrow path leading to it that while it may do for goats and deer, even my experienced and sure-footed mule must be led along on it where the volcanic cold air and the wailing tigers and mountain lions help to increase the chill of my bronchial pneumonia patient; or in the heart of the treacherous, swampy, dripping jungle, where in the matted tangles of the tall kunai grass, in the very breeding ground of legions.of mosquitoes and hundreds of kinds of insect pests, scorpions, snakes and alligators, there stands the poorest fisherman's loneliest kitchen and living room, all in one palm hut, with an eclamptic primipara----also a confirmed leper---by the "yellowest malaria fever in it, awaiting death or the "doctorcito"!

Only such very sick people in such an extreme condition can have such absolute faith in the doctor. And I just simply must get these sick people well, and quickly, too, as the old Indian medicine-man, still remembered in their legends, used to do it, and more so because people with no education or with the most limited degree of it do not understand the complicated causes of any eventual delay. Besides, my bread (we have no butter here in the jungle country) and my reputation depend on my successful doctoring"!

The movie-reel-like picture of all my past ambitions and future hopes of and for a successfully rounded out professional life flashes through my mind, but----and by these "buts" human affairs are ordered

---

here I must deal with present realities!

And now back to realities and facts. So I instinctively turn to my much-treasured bottle of HC1 solution and use it here at the world's most tucked-away corner, in the same manner and with the same excellent results, as used in the great U. S. A. in the very heart of modern civilization. Can there he anythingi more wonderfully real and more really wonderful than this accessibility and facility?

Right you are, Dr. Ferguson and your followers: induced leucocytosis and increased phagocytic activity. Well enough and true, but for me the story, the "good doing " does not end there. I have seen too much to be satisfied with these limits. Due to the invariably excellent results I have personally obtained with HCl solution injected, in my own mind I am convinced that there is a great deal more as to the cause or causes of the beneficial healing action of this HCl solution. What the white and red blood cells will do under its influence we all thoroughly understand. What I want to know, what we do not know yet, is what HCI solution injected, alone and in itself, due to its intrinsic therapeutic value and merit,is capable of doing and will do besides, while and when helping nature to do what only nature can do.

PNEUMONIA

Take, for instance, in my exceedingly severe pneumonia cases, where it has never failed me. Pneumonia---all types of pneumococci---in hot climates is more treacherous, more deadly, than in the temperate zone. A characteristic of these pneumonia cells is that they are inclosed or, should I say, "gum-coated." Thus incased, this outer coating or casing or capsule contains polysaccharides. This evidently impermeable coating makes the protected germs inaccessible,virulent, deadly; more so if each type has its own particular coating. Once made accessible (to the action of the white blood cells), exposed, undressed, so to say, these germs are not particularly dangerous.

Then, I ask, when injected, what does HCl solution do to these pneumonia cells, to this perhaps impenetrable coating? Is it that it itself attacks and simply "skins" them? After which, once made accessible, their undoing and elimination are simple through the natural process of leucocytosis plus phagocytosis. Am I on the right trail in my deductions?

Or would this HCl solution injected, do some biochemical wonder as to respiration and the physiology of circulation, since the exudates (blood, pus, serum, germs) that accumulate in the minute air chambers of the lung cause it to lose its "sponginess" and become liver-like; the devitalized air cells definitely collapse; no adequate amount of oxygen can get into the blood; neither can carbon dioxide and toxins constantly produced by the attacking germs escape from the blood; the lungs, under the undue labor, become exhausted; so does the toxin-poisoned heart.

Yet noting the unfailing beneficial effect I always obtain with HCl solution injected, even in such extreme conditions, isn't it reasonable if I ask: did it cause dilatation of the plugged air spaces (so that the white cells can get to the toxins?) so that enough oxygen can get through, so to sustain the patient until (the white blood cells having done their work) carbon dioxide gets into the blood and helps (via the brain) to excite the lungs to expand and contract, thus re-establishing normal breathing and saving the patient?

Or can or does HCl solution injected act as a detoxifier or a "toning up" agent when the toxin-poisoned cells are no longer able to take and deliver life's essential oxygen?

The most trying circumstances----numerous civil uprisings, thus not only far away, but cut off from any possible help simultaneously with the burning down of my house and drug store-- under which I have been laboring in my daily clinical work, compelled me at first not only to use, but really to abuse, HCl injections. At first I entertained very serious doubts about this substance, and did not approve its promiscuous use in almost every case that came to my clinic, my only excuse (to myself) being of the sheerest necessity: numerous sick people seeking treatment and absolutely no other medicine available. So if necessity is mother of all inventions, so much more was it mother in my case of innovation or discovery or, better yet, "revelation" of this humble, but marvelous, acid.

Little by little, the more I used it-upon others as well as on myself-my doubts turned into hopes and gradually my hopes into happy surprises. Looking back now, after having used several thousand injections-I am not only not sorry for having done my "dangerous" experiments, but I am decidedly glad for all, for HCl injected had proved to be a godsend therapeutic agent on all occasions when used with due caution and prudence.

My investigations-with the capable guidance of a competent American biochemist I employ---I consider far from being complete. However, to me it is certain that HCl, besides its action upon cellular life and cell behavior, does have some additional inherent "virtue," for it accomplishes much more than claimed by its most ardent advocate.

So far we have only heard of what it will do in infectious diseases.

My observations, my failures and results, my work with this substance, lead me to reason thus: man is the center of medicine; he is either the victim of illness or is the cause of his own disease; so human diseases may be put into two general divisions: from within, degenerative diseases; from without, the infectious diseases. Numerous subdivisions are possible, but not necessary.

In the infectious diseases the leucocytosis and phagocytosis theory--as championed by Dr. Ferguson and his followers---certainly is correct and most satisfactory.

But what about the degenerative diseases, due to tear and wear, where the "cogs" in the wonderful human machinery become more or less worn and out of alignment; life-giving and sustaining substances----minerals----depleted or exhausted?

What will HCl solution injected accomplish in order to obtain "repair"?

What are the coadjuvants that are needed to make it a complete success? In pernicious types of malaria and in a malignant type of highly infectious dengue, as seen only in tropical climates, HCl solution injected intravenously produces a notable effect--- quick and sure---upon the hematopoietic elements of the spleen, marrow, and lymph glands.


MALARIA

The gradual re-establishment of the acid-base equilibrium of the body, the renewed carbon dioxide combining power of the blood, the relation of the chlorides of the blood plasma under its action attest its highly active and beneficial (repairing, coagulating, etc.) influence.

This is my tenth year of clinical experience in Mexico, spent in different parts, mostly on the coast in the hot country. I usually see from two to twenty malarial cases every day, besides all the diseases that one finds "in the books," and sometimes I think that there still are some "unwritten" ones that occasionally come to me.

Among all, my own case was, perhaps, the most characteristic and most malignant. Though saturated with quinine, I was daily shaken with chills lasting 45 minutes followed by high temperature up to 105 degrees of two to three hours duration; then profuse sweating.

Having exhausted all my own malarial knowledge, I consulted two of our best malaria expert M.D.'s whose three weeks' treatment did me no good. Of my usual weight of 170 lbs., I have lost 65 lbs., became the yellowest-skinned skeleton, with added tropical dysentery and stomach ulcers, and---seriously contemplating suicide.

Then, just at this time, my house and small drug store burned down. Thereafter the only medicine I had left was a scorched bottle of "acid phosphate of Dr. Horsford," and at that time it enjoyed quite a large sale in Mexico. It is composed of different mineral phosphates and dilute HCl.

Hardly able to drag myself around, and with many sick people asking for treatment, I decided on something "big and bold." I diluted that bottle to the limit, so that it would go a long way, and I myself took it by the mouth and in intramuscular injections and administered it to every one of my patients for any and all ailments.

Seems and looks foolish, doesn't it, this my "Indian medicine man" attitude and action? Yes, I think so myself, but everything is fair in love and in war. So is everything excusable for a sick person trying to get well! To be short---in one week we all were well and happy. This, again, gave me the idea to use certain mineral salts as coadjuvant with minute doses of HCl.

Since then I have treated a great many similar malignant types of malaria---bilious, hemoglobinuric or black-waterfevers. One of them that I treated with quinine and salvarsan terminated fatally, with persistent hiccough, hepatitis and abundant vomiting of blood. All others treated with my HCl mineral prescription survived, like myself. In the most severe cases of tropical malaria, with "access pernicieux" (when death may supervene with unexpected suddenness) and with cerebral involvement and consequent coma, the very efficient and quick effect of HCl injected is noticeable in copious sweating, this "crisis" of sweating usually terminating the comatous state and heralding the beginning of nursing back to health.

Now, why is this sweating? What effect can HCl produce on the "glandulas sudorificas"? Or on the corresponding nervous system in malarial amblyopia that under the action of the HCl solution, injected intravenously, will clear up readily? How does it work in this case upon the benumbed or oppressed nerves (causing release from oppression)? What deductions and explanations can doctors, thoroughly familiar with the blood picture, morbid anatomy, pathology and pathological anatomy, etc., of this "multiform" disease, make as to the action of the HCl injected? Those who know malaria and quinine therapy in all its forms and manifestations know that quinine is not a specific for malaria. It is only that certain types of malaria and malaria in its certain "phases" are amenable to quinine. But, all and every malarial case will clear up when the sulphate of quinine is used, dissolved with water with the aid of HCl. And in the opinion and practice of our best malaria experts, it is infallible when the chlorides, as recommended by Dr. Walter B. Guy in the pages of THE MEDICAL WORLD, are added.

Not to apply the HCl solution with quinine in all malaria cases right from the start I would consider a culpable error.

If HCl solution so used does not prevent the next succeeding "chill" (it always diminishes it), or if relapse is prone to occur, it is only because the right dose was not given.

Can it be that HCl solution injected, due to its inherent quality or virtue, exerts a toxic influence upon malarial parasites, killing them by poisoning or "burning: them up or choking them to death by engulfing them, by isolation or saturation? Or is it that the white blood cells will do any or all this when stirred up by the HCl solution injected?

What an immensely broad field is offered here for the most interesting research work as to the possible or likely effect of HCl solution injected, upon these and all other parasite germs. Is such effect the same on the filterable as on the different bacterial germs? On those that are reproduced by dividing or splitting or on those that grow spores? When they alone can or do cause the disease or when acting in concert with some other contaminating organism that somehow gets into the colony? On new germs or on new forms of the old ones? During the reproductive or other evolutive period, in free state or when encapsuled? Such research and accompanying experiments should be carried on and kept up until the final solution is reached, for the hot countries, as well as the temperate zones, have a great many seasonal and regional, but in all "international," pathological puzzles. ELEPHANTIASIS

In another interesting trial I have put the HCl solution in two cases of elephantiasis arabum, and in a good many cases of elephantiasis graecorum. The first, said to be caused by the filaria sanguinis hominis, and the second by the specific bacterium, the bacillus leprae of Hansen. HCl solution injected intravenously in these hopeless cases produces surprising effects.

It is an accepted fact in pathology that the causation of the condition as in the first case is due to lymph stasis, or to an occlusion in the lymph stream. Naturally, the involvement of the lymphatic glands ensues; or lymphangitis may be due to specific infection in the congested area.