A comprehensive, documented report by the Wesix Foundation to the American Medical Association (2) ~ on the results of investigations of air ionization from 1931 to 1958 in Germany, France, Japan, Argentina, the United States and Russia, together with very recently reported ionization studies in this country, provide evidence that negative ions are beneficial when breathed by patients with several types of respiratory disease, while positive ions tend to exert a deleterious or harmful effect.
For example, Kornblueh, Griffin, Piersol and Speicher (3, 4), working at the University of Pennsylvania, reported that 62 per cent of 173 hay fever and asthma patients found relief by breathing negatively ionized air.
Corrado and Beckett ( 5), reporting on a double blind study of the effect of positive ions on allergic patients, reported that 40 per cent of the patients experienced an increase in upper respiratory symptoms which did not occur when the patients were exposed to negative air ions.
Winsor and Beckett (6), reporting on studies at the Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles, reported that the breathing capacity of the observed subjects was reduced from a pre-exposure level of 35 liters per minute to 25 liters per minute during exposure to positive ions and there was also irritation of the respiratory mucosa.
Mibashan (7, 8) reported applying negative ions to 300 infants, children and adults with no untoward effects; and 76 per cent of his patients with respiratory affections were benefited. He also reported that of 30 hypertensive patients treated with negative air ions, 96 per cent reacted favorably.
Vasilyev (9) reported that negative air ions were helpful to many hundreds of people suffering from bronchial asthma, high blood pressure, or ozena. Patients who exhibited slow healing of wounds or who had ulcers of the soft tissues were also benefited when exposed to negative ions by improvement in healing of the respective lesion.
Following his recent trip to Russia, Kornblueh (10) reported that six hundred medical students graduating aimually from the Pavlov Institute Medical School and all resident physicians are getting a substantial indoctrination in the physical and biological aspects of ionization. In some other medical schools the same policy is being observed so that the number of students and physicians who are acquainted with this modality is steadily growing. At the * This is presented in the form of a sequel to the author's paper published in the JOURNAL for February 1956.