During the Middle Ages, the Black Death (1347-1351) ravaged Europe with death from bubonic plague. The aristocracy, sometimes referred to as “blue bloods,” seemed immune, thanks to the benefits of colloidal silver. The habits of the upper class caused them to ingest large amounts of silver. Habits like using sliver utensils, eating off of silver plates, and drinking from silver goblets. When scraping their food from the plate or drinking from their cups, they were ingesting both the food/drink and silver. This ingestion of silver both caused their skin to have a slight blue-gray cast; a benign skin condition called argyria, but saved their lives from the plague that was rapidly killing many people in the lower classes.
Since the widespread introduction of antibiotics (1940-1945), silver-based formulas were discarded, except for some topical silver salves, used specifically on burns, and neonatal eye drops.
Colloidal silver was in common use until around 1938. Many people can still recall their grandparents putting silver dollars in their milk jars to keep the milk from souring too quickly before the widespread use of refrigeration.
At the turn of the century, scientists had discovered that the body's most important fluids are colloidal in nature: suspended ultra-fine particles. Blood, for example, carries ultra fine particles of nutrients, oxygen, immune support, etc. to all the body cells. This led to studies with colloidal minerals like silver. Prior to 1938, colloidal silver was used by physicians as a mainstream antibiotic treatment and was considered quite "high-tech". Production methods, however, were costly. the pharmaceutical industry moved in, causing colloidal research to be set aside in favor of fast working and financially lucrative drugs.*
