René Qinton

René Quinton

In his chief scientific work, “L’eau de mer, milieu organique” (Ocean Water,, Organic Matrix), René Quinton demonstrated the analogy between the body’s inner environment, or the blood plasma, and ocean water, the medium in which all cellular life begun.
With his plasma, René Quinton cured tens of thousands of children in France and Egypt and he eradicated some of the most virulent diseases of the time in France, like infant cholera and gastro-intestinal infections. In the 1950’s the benefits of his therapy were further demonstrated with a new type of ocean water bath therapy or thalassotherapy.
Quinton defined the law of osmotic constancy at the end of the nineteenth century and he stated that our inner environment, the liquid in which all our cells are bathed, has a nearly identical mineral composition and concentration to primary ocean water, and it is in osmosis with it.
After having conducted careful animal experiments, Quinton was asked to secretly treat a dying typhoid patient. He did this by injecting him with his plasma. The next morning after the first injection, he found the patient revived and eager to eat. In time, the patient completely recovered.
Following this first success, he treated a patient suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, complicated by erysipelas. The patient also completely recovered.
In 1906, Quinton opened his first dispensary in Paris where he saved some 70,000 babies and children that were dying from gastro-intestinal infections. Everyday, hundreds of mothers brought in their babies for treatment and in December of the same year, a second dispensary was opened. Newspapers often referred to him as the new Louis Pasteur.
He then started working with pregnant women and his therapy was very successful in reducing the number of miscarriages. The therapy was also applied to many pathologies and 12 new dispensaries opened around the country.
Quinton’s therapy was partially neglected during the war and it gradually re-emerged after the war. In 1980, his therapy became known in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Canada, U.S.A. and Latin America.

French physiologist born in Chaume-en-Brie, René Quinton proved that the composition of human blood plasma and the primary oceanic water were very similar. Based on this finding, he elaborated a therapeutic method extensively used during his time and which is now being rediscovered.