Viruses that can survive days on plastic, glass, or steel tend to succumb within minutes on a surface made of copper. Our ancestors knew the infection-fighting property of copper, long before they knew about microbes themselves.
The first recorded use of copper as an infection-killing agent comes from Smith's Papyrus, the oldest-known medical document in history. The information therein has been ascribed to an Egyptian doctor circa 1700 B.C. but is based on information that dates back as far as 3200 B.C. Egyptians designated the ankh symbol, representing eternal life, to denote copper in hieroglyphs.
As far back as 1,600 B.C., the Chinese used copper coins as medication to treat heart and stomach pain as well as bladder diseases. The sea-faring Phoenicians inserted shavings from their bronze swords into battle wounds to prevent infection. For thousands of years, women have known that their children didn't get diarrhea as frequently when they drank from copper vessels and passed on this knowledge to subsequent generations. "You don't need a medical degree to diagnose diarrhea," Schmidt says.
But what makes copper so different from other materials, even other metals, in fighting microbes? The explanation is in its atomic structure, which you can read about at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Stanzilla)
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