Colloidal Silver Cream

Welcome to my health book reviews plus commentary posted on a regular basis! Find out about water and salt for health, asthma allergies and more! Each book review contains a summary of the author’s most important takeaway points followed by my commentary at the end, where I connect some dot for you. The order of the books reviewed and books to be reviewed was predetermined by me. This sequence is intended for one book to build upon another and coalesce into a picture for you. 

The first four books I consider to be foundational and these are: Your Body’s Many Cries for Water, ABC of Asthma Allergies and Lupus, Water Cures Drugs Kill, and Obesity Cancer Depression: Their Common Cause & Natural Cure. These can be found in the archive.

This book is very long which is why I have to post it in multiple parts. This post summarizes the first seven chapters. This book deals with actual limb regeneration in many animals and offers significant hope for limb regeneration in humans.

Chapter 1: Hydra’s Heads and Medusa’s Blood

Health is only one, but diseases are many. Likewise, there seems to be one fundamental force that heals. The prevailing mythology today is to deny the existence of this force in favor of a thousand little forces sitting on the pharmacy shelves. The inner healing force can be tapped in many ways which are variations of the main four: faith healing, magic healing, psychic healing and spontaneous healing. The author goes on to describe several historical and mythological acts of healing.

Failed Healing in Bone

Dr. Becker is an orthopedic surgeon and he often pondered about his specialty’s unsolved problem: the nonunion of fractures. Normally a fractured bone will grow together if the ends are held close together without movement.

Most biologists have been sure that only chemical processes were involved in growth and healing, so the work on nonunions has been limited to calcium metabolism and hormone relationships. Surgeons would also scrape the fracture surfaces and devised increasingly complicated plates and screws to hold the bone ends in place.

Stages of Fracture Healing

Every bone is covered by a layer of tough fibrous collagen. Collagen is a protein and also a “glue” that holds all our cells together. Underneath the collagen layer are the cells that produce it. These two layers form the periosteum. When a bone breaks the periosteum divides as follows: one of the daughter cells stays where it is and the other moves into the blood clot that surrounds the fracture and changes into an osteoblast. The osteoblast builds a swollen ring of bone around the break.

In childhood the bone marrow actively produces red and white blood cells but in adulthood most of the marrow turns to fat. Although some active marrow cells remain. Around the break a new tissue forms from the marrow cells, which revert to a primitive, neo-embryonic state. These then change into primitive cartilage cells, then to mature cartilage cells and then into new bone cells that heal the break from the inside. This process has been proclaimed to be the regeneration of a complex body part.

This process must be distinguished from two other forms of healing. The first is where small wounds within a single tissue are healed by the cells that merely divide to close the gap. The second is where the injury is too big for single-tissue repair and the animal lacks true regenerative capabilities to restore the damaged part. In this case the injury is patched over with collagen fibers forming a scar. True regeneration is very closely related to embryonic development and may be considered the most fundamental mode of healing.

The rest of the chapter discusses the work of several naturalist researchers who discovered regenerative abilities is plants, hydras, crayfish, starfish and the salamander. The conclusion drawn was that the simpler the animal the more powerful the regenerative capabilities. As the animal’s complexity increases so do decrease the regenerative capabilities.  It should be noted that the salamander has extraordinary regenerative capabilities and it is not such a simple organism. 

Chapter 2: The Embryo at the Would 

The larger philosophical conflict is between vitalism and mechanism. Since biology includes the study of ourselves, it’s the most emotionally charged science and it has been the battleground throughout its history. The vitalists believe in a spirit that made living things fundamentally different from other substances. The mechanists believe that life can be understood in chemical and physical laws that governed nonliving matter and only ignorance of these would lead people to believe in nonsense like spirit. The vitalists favored epigenesis, which imposed order on seeming chaos by some intangible “vital” force. The mechanists preferred preformation and since “science” increasingly insisted on material explanations for everything, epigenesis lost out despite evidence of regeneration.

Epigenesis-the theory that an individual is developed by successive differentiation of an unstructured egg rather than by a simple enlarging of a preformed entity (such as a tiny man being carried in a sperm cell).

There are two types of cell division: meiosis and mitosis. In meiosis, which takes place in the sex cells, the cells divide and each daughter cell receives half the number of chromosomes. Mitosis occurs in all other body cells where each daughter cells gets the same number of chromosomes as the original cell. 

Meiosis was first elucidated by Boveri in 1880 at the University of Munich and it was strenuously opposed by Thomas Hunt Morgan, an embryologist at Columbia University. Later on, through his own experiments Morgan confirmed Boveri’s findings and received a Nobel Prize for it in 1933.

It is to be noted that Morgan got started by studying salamander limb regeneration and he made a crucial observation. He found that the new limb was preceded by a mass of cells that appeared on the stump and it resembled the unspecified cell-mass of the early embryo. The structure was called the blastema. He concluded that the way a regenerated limb formed was identical to how an embryo formed from an egg. He further postulated that in the earliest stages of an embryo every gene on every chromosome is active and available to every cell. As the organism grows three fundamental tissue layers form:

-Endoderm- develops into the glands and visceral.

-Mesoderm- becomes the muscles, bones and circulatory system.

-Ectoderm- becomes the skin, sense organs and nervous system.

At this stage of differentiation some of the genes are already being turned off, so that the cells can differentiate further in their own manners based upon their specialty. However, the complete genetic blueprint is carried by every cell nucleus. Unfortunately, science is reluctant to discard worn-out theories and even though there was no evidence to support it, one idea was adopted by the new science of genetics. This was the idea that cellular differentiation was a one-way street so cells could never dedifferentiate to become more primitive and unspecialized. This created terrible difficulties for the study of regeneration.

After Morgan’s work on salamander limb regrowth the following principles emerged:

-Polarity-the creature’s normal relationship of front to back and top to bottom are preserved in the regenerate.

-Gradients- regenerative capabilities are strongest in one area of the animal’s body, which gradually diminish in all directions.

-Dominance- a particular section of a lost part is replaced first followed by the others in a fixed sequence.

-Inhibition- the presence of any particular part prevents the formation of a duplicate of itself or of other parts that come before that part in the sequence.

Living things are called organisms because of the overriding importance of organization. The salamander is complex, almost as complex as a human. Its forelimb is the same as ours and yet all the interrelated parts grow back in the proper order. The complete regeneration of a limb by a salamander takes about eight weeks. 

This regenerative process was full of problems for biology. What coordinates the growth? What is the control mechanism? How does the blastema (embryonic cells) know to make a foreleg? Please note that the salamander never makes a mistake. Further experiments showed that if the blastema from a foreleg was moved within five to seven days after appearing and grafted near the hind leg, it grew a second hind leg. But the transplantation of an older blastema from a foreleg stump to a hind leg area produced a foreleg. So, the young blastema knew where it was and the older blastema knew where it had been.

It has been determined through various experiments (starting in 1823) that the nerves are the carriers of the stimulus that triggers the blastema. When the nerves in the salamander’s limb were cut before amputation the limb would not grow back but if time was given for the nerves to regenerate and then amputated the limb would grow back.

It was discovered in 1940 that the rapid formation of full-thickness skin over the stumps (after amputation) of adult frogs’ legs might be what prevented them from regenerating. Dipping the wounds in a saturated salt solution several times a day prevented the dermis from growing over the stumps. This worked, most of the frogs whose forelimbs were amputated between the elbow and wrist, replaced some of what they lost (but not all). Another scientist would prick the stump with a needle every day to keep the skin from forming, and regeneration would continue (but not regenerate completely).

The explanation for decreasing regeneration with increased complexity is as follows: The ratio between body mass and total nerve tissue is about the same in most animals, but more and more nerve became concentrated in the brain (a process called encephalization) as animals became more complex. This diminished the amount of nerve fiber available for stimulating regeneration in peripheral parts, often below the critical level. About 30% of normal nerve tissue must be present for regeneration to occur.

Experiments had also showed that in nonregenerating frogs if nerves were (sciatic nerve) surgically redirected first to the area to be amputated first, then the amputation was performed, the limb would regenerate. So, the presence of an adequate amount of nerves was critical.

In 1958 Dr. Becker (co-author of this book) began looking for pattern-control and blastema-stimulating factors. At that time, it was known that two things could yield some regrowth in nonregenerating organisms: extra nerve supply and extra injury. These were related.

Dr. Becker found the translated work of a Russian scientist named Sinyukhin who worked with tomatoe plants. He would cut the branches and took electrical measurements as the plant healed. He found a stream of electrons flowing from the wound for a few days. This is called the current of injury. During the second week after a callus is formed and a new branch began to form the current became stronger and reversed its polarity to positive. As the positive current increased the cells in the area more than doubled their metabolic rate, became more acidic and produced more vitamin C than before. Sinyukhin then applied extra current with small batteries to a group of newly injured plants to augment the regeneration current. The plants restored their branches three times faster than the control plants. The currents were only two to three amperes for five days. Larger amounts of electricity killed the plants. The polarity had to match that normally found in the plant. If the opposite current was used regeneration was delayed by two to three weeks. To American biology this was all nonsense. (Here the author goes back into history to explain why this was considered nonsense).

After thoroughly studying the works of his predecessors, Dr. Becker came to the conclusion that the current of injury is proportional to regeneration. He designed his next experiment.

Chapter 3: The Sign of the Miracle 

The experiment was as follows: Dr. Becker measured the current of injury in regenerating versus non-regenerating limbs. He uniformly amputated the forelegs of frogs and salamanders. Then as the frogs’ stumps healed and the salamanders’ legs regrew, he measured the currents of injury each day.

The results were:

-The polarity at the stump reversed to positive right after the injury.

-The following day it reached over 20 milivolts in both frogs and salamanders.

-The voltage of the salamanders did not exceed that of the frogs.

-The force of the current flowing from the salamanders’ stumps dropped rapidly and from the frogs’ stumps stayed at the same level.

-By the third day the salamanders had no current at all and their blastemas had not even formed.

-Between the sixth and tenth day the salamander potential changed signs again and exceeded the previous peak at 30 milivolts negative just as the blastemas began emerging.

-The frogs continued with steadily declining positive voltage.

-As the salamanders regenerated their limb, the frogs’ stumps grew over with skin and scar tissue.

Chapter 4: Life’s Potential 

Key points on several basic concepts:

-Everything electrical relates to the phenomenon of charge. No one knows what it is but it is a fundamental property of matter and it exists in two opposite polarities, which we call positive and negative.

-Protons are positively charged particles in the nucleus of an atom along with neutrons which have no charge.

-Electrons have a negative charge and they orbit the nucleus and they equal the number of protons.

-Electrons are 1,836 times smaller than protons. They are much easier to dislodge from the atom and are the main carriers of electric charge.

-A negative charge is a surplus of electrons and a positive charge is a lack of electrons.

-The flow of electrons is called current and it is measured in amperes.

-Current has the characteristic of electromotive force, which is the push behind the current and it’s measured in volts.

-A current flows only when a source of electrons (negatively charged material) is connected to a material having fewer free electrons (positively charged in relation to the source) by a conductor, through which the electrons can flow. This is what happens when you connect the negative terminal of a battery to its positive pole with a wire or a radio's innards: You've completed a circuit between negative and positive. If there's no conductor, and hence no circuit, there's only a hypothetical charge flow, or electric potential, between the two areas. The force of this latent current is also measured in volts by temporarily completing the circuit with a recording device.

-The potential can continue to build until a violent burst of current equalizes the charges; this is what happens when lightning strikes. Smaller potentials may remain stable, however. In this case they must be continuously fed by a direct current flowing from positive to negative, the opposite of the normal direction. In this part of a circuit, electrons actually flow from where they're scarce to where they're more abundant.

-An electric field forms around any electric charge. This means that any other charged object will be attracted (if the polarities are opposite) or repelled (if they're the same) for a certain distance around the first object. The field is the region of space in which an electrical charge can be detected, and it's measured in volts per unit of area.

-Any flow of electrons sets up a combined electric and magnetic field around the current, which in turn affects other electrons nearby. Around a direct current the electromagnetic field is stable, whereas an alternating current's field collapses and reappears with its poles reversed every time the current changes direction. This reversal happens sixty times a second in our normal house currents. Just as a current produces a magnetic field, a magnetic field, when it moves in relation to a conductor, induces a current. Any varying magnetic field, like that around household appliances, generates a current in nearby conductors. The weak magnetic fields we'll be discussing are measured in gauss.

-Most organisms (but not all) have polarity where the head is negative and the tail end is positive.

In this chapter the author describes the experiments of many researchers and their results which made him more confident in the idea that electricity was a significant factor in biological life. All these experiments are too involved to be presented in this book summary, just know that this is the conclusion Dr. Becker reached after studying them thoroughly.

Of significance to Dr. Becker was the work done by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi who was calmly laying down the foundation for a new biology. On March 22, 1941 Szent-Gyorgyi made a speech before the Budapest Academy of Science. He said that when experimenters broke living things down to their constituent parts life slipped through their fingers and they found themselves working with dead matter. “It looks like some basic fact about life is still missing,” Szent-Gyorgyi proposed putting electricity back into living things but not in a way it had been thought of at the turn of the century. It should be noted that J.D. Rockefeller and Abraham Flexner in 1910 had denounced the use of electric shocks and currents in clinical practice as it has been over enthusiastically used since the mid-1700s. In this manner all concepts of electricity in biology had been removed from the medical schools.

Up to that point there were only two known modes of current conduction, ionic and metallic. Metallic conduction occurs in wires and ionic conduction occurs by the movement of ions dissolved in water. However, it would be impossible to sustain an ionic current down the length of even the shortest nerve and metallic wiring had never been found in living organisms. Semiconduction was the third kind of current and it was a laboratory curiosity since the 1930s. Semiconductors are halfway between conductors and insulators and can only carry small currents but they can readily conduct these currents over long distances.

Semiconduction can occur only in materials that have an orderly molecular structure, like crystals, in which electrons can move easily from the electron cloud of one atom to the electron cloud of another atom. These atoms are arranged in neat geometric lattice as opposed to the frozen jumble of ordinary solids. Some crystalline materials have spaces in the lattice where other atoms can fit. These are considered impurities and these atoms may have more or less electrons than the atoms of the lattice. These “extra” electrons of the impurity atoms are free to move through the lattice without being bound to any particular atom. If the impurity atoms have less electrons the “holes” in their electron clouds can be filled with electrons from other atoms and this leaves holes elsewhere. A negative current, N-type semiconduction is the movement of electrons. A positive current, P-type semiconduction is the movement of these holes which are considered positive charge.

Szent-Gyorgyi pointed out that the molecular structures of many parts of the cells were regular enough to support semiconduction. Unfortunately, this idea was completely ignored at the time and then dismissed as evidence of his advancing age.

Dr. Becker continued the work regardless with the salamander. He set up an experiment to test Burr’s measurements (head negative tail positive), however he found something more complex than that. He found a complex field that followed the arrangement of the nervous system. There were positive potentials over each lobe of the brain and little smaller ones over the brachial and lumbar nerve ganglia between each pair of limbs. The readings became more negative when moving away from those collections of nerve bodies. The hands, feet and tip of the tail had the highest negative potentials. 

In another series of experiments that involved severing the long nerve fibers from their bodies in the spinal cord wiped out the limb potentials completely. However, if the spinal cord was cut but the peripheral nerves were left attached to their cell bodies, the limb potentials didn’t change. This definitely looked as if a current was being generated in the nerve cell bodies and traveled down the fiber. Dr. Becker tested the potential distribution in many other animals including humans. He found that in humans as well the entire head and spinal region was very positive. The three areas that were most positive in humans were the same as in the salamander: the brain, the brachial plexus between the shoulder blades, and the lumbar enlargement at the base of the spinal cord. He found in all vertebrates a midline head potential that suggested a direct current flowing from back to front through the middle of the brain. It appeared that the current came from the reticular activating system, which is a network of cross-linked neurons fanned out from the brain stem into higher centers to control the level of sleep or wakefulness and focus of attention.

Dr. Becker then tested whether the current of injury and the surface potentials came from the same source. When taking electrical measurements on salamanders as they healed fractures a positive zone formed immediately around the break but the rest of the limb maintained some of its negative potential. Between the fifth and tenth days the positive zone reversed its potential and became more negative than the rest of the limb as the fracture healed.

Next Dr. Becker setup whole body monitoring to correlate the entire pattern of surface voltages with the animal’s level of activity when not anesthetized. Results:

-Wakefulness, sensory stimuli, and muscle movements were associated with negative potentials in the brain’s frontal area and at the periphery of the nervous system. The greater the activity the greater the negative potentials.

-There was a shift to positive potentials during rest and even more positive during sleep.

Dr. Becker continued on to test for semiconduction. He put in a strong magnetic field so that the lines of force cut across a conductor (salamander limb) at right angles. Then he placed another conductor with no current perpendicular to both the original conductor (salamander limb) and the magnetic field. If there is a current in the salamander’s limb some of the charge carriers will be deflected by the magnetic field into the other conductor producing a voltage that can be measured. This is called Hall voltage and it works differently for the three types of current. For any given strength of a magnetic field the Hall voltage is proportional to the mobility of the charge carriers. Ions in a solution are relatively big and barely deflected by the field. Electrons in a wire are constrained by the nature of the metal. In both cases the Hall voltage is small and hard to detect. Electrons in semiconductors are very free to move, however, and produce Hall voltages with much weaker magnetic fields.

During this experiment Dr. Becker used an anesthetized salamander and took voltage measurements every few minutes with the magnet and without it as the salamander regained consciousness. He measured the voltage from the tips of the fingers to the spinal cord. In deep anesthesia, the DC voltage along the limb was zero and so was the Hall voltage. As the anesthetic wore off, the normal potential along the limb gradually appeared, and so did a Hall voltage. It increased right along with the limb potential, until the animal recovered completely and walked away from the apparatus. 

This experiment demonstrated unequivocally that there was a real electric current flowing along the salamander's leg and it proved that the current was semiconducting.

Chapter 5: The Circuit of Awareness 

If current controlled the way nerves work in the brain and body then it must control consciousness to some degree. When Dr. Becker passed a current from front to back of a salamander’s head to cancel its internal current, the animal fell unconscious. Through further experimentation Dr. Becker determined that direct currents within the central nervous system regulated the level of sensitivity of the neurons by several methods: by changing the amount of current in one direction, by changing the direction of the current (reversing the polarity), and by modulating the current with slow waves (delta waves or less). Moreover, we could exert the same control from outside by putting current of each type into the head.

To show that the brain was semiconducting just like the peripheral nerves Dr. Becker used the Hall voltage phenomenon but backwards. He measured the effect of a magnetic field on the brain instead of on the production of Hall voltage. Since the Hall voltage was produced by diverting some of the charge carriers from the original current direction a strong enough magnetic field should divert all of them. This magnetic field perpendicular to the brain’s midline current should have the same effect as canceling out the normal current with one applied from the outside. In this case the animal should fall asleep. This was performed with a salamander. As the magnetic field was gradually increased delta waves appeared at 2000 gauss. At 3000 gauss the entire EEG was composed of simple delta waves (sleep) and the animal was motionless and unresponsive to stimuli. As the magnetic field strength was decreased a normal EEG pattern returned and the salamander regained consciousness within seconds. This was a sharp contrast to other types of anesthesia. But when direct currents were used the EEG showed delta waves for up to thirty minutes after the current was turned off and the animals remained groggy and unresponsive just as after chemical anesthesia.

Subsequent measurements of this nature in humans revealed that the back-to-front current varied with changes in consciousness just like in salamanders. It was strongest during heightened physical or mental activity and declined during rest. It also reversed direction in normal sleep and anesthesia.

Chapter 6: The Ticklish Gene 

Bone has an amazing capacity for growth and it does so in three different ways. 

-In childhood the long bones have one or two growth centers called epiphyseal plates. Each plate is a body of cartilage whose leading edge grows continuously while the trailing edge transforms into bone. When the bone is the appropriate length, the process stops.

-Bones cannot heal. Fractures knit because new bone made from other tissues unites the fractured ends. Old pre-existing bone does not have the capacity to grow. The periosteum and the bone marrow are two tissues used to form new bone. The cells dedifferentiate and form a blastema, filling the central part of the fracture. The blastema cells then turn into cartilage cells and later into more osteoblasts. This process is true regeneration, following the same sequence of cell changes as the regrowing salamander limb.

-The third process of bone growth follows Wolf’s law, which states that a bone responds to stress by growing into whatever shape best meets the needs of the owner.

It was also found that bone was Piezoelectricity, which is the ability of some materials to transform mechanical stress into electricity.  For example, if you bend a piezoelectric crystal hard enough to deform it slightly, there'll be a pulse of current through it. This squeeze pops electrons out of their places in the crystal lattice. They migrate toward the compression, so the charge on the inside curve of a bent crystal is negative. The potential quickly disappears if you sustain the stress, but when you release it, an equal and opposite positive pulse appears as the electrons rebound before settling back into place.

Collagen and apatite (calcium phosphate) are the building blocks of bone. It was further discovered through experimentation that collagen was an N-type semiconductor and apatite was a P-type semiconductor. The connected surfaces of collagen and apatite would form a natural PN-junction diode, which would rectify current. Rectification is the process of converting alternating current to direct current. Collagen also turned out to be a piezoelectric generator and apatite was not. 

When current flows “uphill” against the normal flow from P to N semiconductors it is called a reverse bias current and this was used to look for any photoelectric effect in the bone. Many semiconductors absorb light and any current going through them will get a boost from this absorbed light. If bone truly had a rectifier the photoelectric effect should be sensitive to the current’s direction. Plus, the current in reverse bias in the same light intensity should rise more than the current in forward bias. Through experimentation this is exactly what was found.

So, this is how the control mechanism for Wolf’s law was determined. The author wrote: “Mechanical stress on the bone produced a piezoelectric signal from the collagen. The signal was biphasic, switching polarity with each stress-and-release. The signal was rectified by the PN junction between apatite and collagen. This coherent signal did more than merely indicate that stress had occurred. Its strength told the cells how strong the stress was, and its polarity told them what direction it came from. Osteogenic cells where the potential was negative would be stimulated to grow more bone, while those in the positive area would close up shop and dismantle their matrix. If growth and resorption were considered as two aspects of one process, the electrical signal acted as an analog code to transfer information about stress to the cells and trigger the appropriate response.”

One of the most interesting properties of PN junctions is if a current runs through it in forward bias some of the energy is turned into light and is emitted from the surface. These are called light-emitting diodes (LEDs) which are employed in many gadgets including light bulbs. Further experiments revealed that The PN junction between apatite and collagen is held together by two atoms of copper.

It was found that bone was an LED as well. Like many such materials, it required an outside source of light before an electric current would make it release its own light, and the light that the bone emitted was at an infrared frequency invisible to us.

A surprise was subsequently discovered in the blood of frogs. When experiments were performed that involved breaking a limb, red blood cells were recruited into the fracture and became the blastema. Frog red blood cells have a nucleus but the DNA is inactivate as opposed to mammalian red blood cell which do not have a nucleus (all vertebrates except mammals have nuclei in their red blood cells). The frog red blood cell would first lose its flattened elliptical shape and become round. The membrane acquired a scalloped outline. By the third day the cells became ameboid (crawling type of movement) and moved by means of pseudopods (little feet-like projections from the cell membrane). Concurrently their nuclei swelled and the DNA reactivated. At the end of the first week the former red blood cells had a full complement of mitochondria and ribosomes. The hemoglobin had been purged. By the third week they became cartilage-forming cells and then further developed into bone-forming cells. This is dedifferentiation followed by redifferentiation into a totally unrelated cell type.

Humans did not heal their bones by dedifferentiation of red blood cells because the red blood cells have no nuclei so there is no change mechanism available. Mammals had a thicker periosteum than other vertebrates so periosteal cells played a bigger role in healing in mammals. Frogs have both methods available but periosteal activity is stimulated only at high temperatures.

Chapter 7: Good News for Mammals 

After the amputation of the right foreleg of 35 rats a bimetallic device was implanted in the stump. The device was a silver wire connected to a resistor connected to a platinum wire.  In this setup the silver wire was the positive end and the platinum wire was the negative end. It was implanted in such a way so that the platinum wire was at the site of injury delivering a current of one nanoampere. After a week all the rats in the experimental group had a well-formed blastema and seemed ready to replace the whole limb. Further into the experiment the rats had regrown a shaft of the bone extending from the severed humerus. At the proper length there was a typical transverse growth plate of cartilage. Further on there was a good-looking epiphysis that developed at the end. The full limb had not regenerated though. This however was encouraging that mammals still had the ability for orderly part replacement.

The most common childhood injury is the amputation of a fingertip by a car door, lawnmower, electric fan or other things. The standard treatment is to smooth the exposed bone and stitch the skin closed or to reattach the tip by microsurgery. 

A young child was injured in such a way in the early 1970s at the emergency room of Sheffield Children’s Hospital in England. The child benefited from a mix-up. The attending physician dressed the wound but the referral to a surgeon for closure was never made. A few days later surgeon Cynthia Illingworth noticed the fingertip was regenerating! She then treated other children in this manner by not stitching the skin closed and by 1974 she had documented several hundred cases of regrown fingertips, all in children eleven years old or less.

The next question was what was the regenerative capability of older mammals?

Part 2 will be posted soon!