THE MAN WHO SAVED ONE MILLION LIVES

One hundred years ago Prof. Dr. med. Julius Stumpf was a medical contemporary of Wilhelm Roentgen at Würzburg University. While X-rays are still a medical specialty today, Stumpf's successful efforts with a white clay both in internal and external medicine are mostly superseded by modern medicine but they were an important breakthrough early in the 20th century before antibiotics appeared in the 1930's.

Stumpf was the first to cure the always fatal Asian cholera, the first in Germany to heal ulcers of the tibia and to expunge the fetid smell of suppurating wounds, the first to use this Bolus alba officinalis to cure head eczemas, diphtheria, cervical catarrh, and gangrene. The white clay (bolus alba) was kaolinite derived from various unspecified sources from German regions.

All these successes were reported in very prominent German medical weekly papers such as the Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift or the Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift.

For the first time, a 1000 year old practice using clay was explained, expanded, and brought to life. Modern medicines have obviated most of the white clay in their pharmaceuticals yet millions of people in this world have access to clay and not antibiotics.