The Silver Bullet

Perhaps a few of you can remember the Black & White cowboy picture series titled, The Lone Ranger, the masked six-gun toting stranger on a white stallion with his sidekick, Tonto. They put fear into the roughnecks willing to break the law. And, there were his shiny, silver bullets! I often wondered why they were silver? He wasn’t shooting the flesh-eating zombies or the blood-sucking vampires that could only be killed with a silver dagger to the heart! Perhaps with all those western silver mines, silver was easier to get than say, lead.

Today, silver is a commodity traded on the stock exchange like apples and oranges, and ranks in the other precious metals category next to gold. It has many medical and industrial applications, is a great electrical conductor, and people like the shine it gives when they wear silver jewelry. But there is an off-missed benefit to silver that I got to thinking about, silver is toxic to many microscopic organisms, e.g. PPLO, bacteria, and perhaps, even viri.

Throughout the 1700’s and into the 1800’s eating utensils were made of or with silver. To some degree, even the commoner might have a silver spoon in his/her mouth. Now, given that silver will kill these organisms noted above, that meant that shoveling food into one’s mouth with a silver spoon invariably had a disinfecting effect on the germs that would enter through the oral cavity. Perhaps those germs that cause mouth sores and tooth decay were ‘driven the nail’ with each shoveled mouthful! So, why then switch to stainless steel? Good question. What about those silver fillings as opposed to fillings with a lead component?

It has been shown that ancient man suffered from tooth decay, but not for eating hard candies and all that 20^thCentury refined sugar! I suspect they didn’t have silver utensils. So, if elemental silver is a sleeping panacea, why hasn’t there been a move to get a silver spoon into every person’s mouth?  I think we all know the answer. My daughter alerted me to aqueous silver, silver at the molecular level in liquid solution that is so popular in some circles. Personally, I think there would be enough molecular silver ion lost to the spoon that would enter our body without having to drink the stuff! We would improve our health just by using the silver shovel! But…

You just don’t go down to the local big-box store and buy a sterling silver fork or spoon! And flatware sets in sterling cost thousands of dollars! Again, that money thing, silver sets for the rich and famous, SS for the minions. But wait a minute, many of us do have those silver flatware sets, handed down perhaps from Grandma! Unfortunately, the spoons and knives and forks only come out for special occasions because they shine so nice, we have to keep them polished, hidden in the wooden display case!

The other day at an estate sale I came across a sterling flatware set. It wasn’t complete, but that’s ok cause I’ll probably sell off a bunch of utensils and make a small profit. But I now have a Sterling silver spoon to stick in my mouth whenever I need kill some germs!