In 1939 Hill and Pillsbury published their exhaustive review of the literature on argyria and the pharmacology of silver. On page 13 of their book, they discussed the work of Minz(1930) on these issues concerning the form of silver as it is it is absorbed and transported in the body. [Minz, B.: Ztschr. f. Klin. Med. 114:623-41, 1930]
Hill and Pillsbury wrote: "...Gager and Ellison state that the chemical changes which silver undergoes previous to absorption are not clear, and that the initial form in which silver is administered is of no importance as regards the final compound which will be transported by the bloodstream. It has been assumed that a free silver ion entering the bloodstream forms a soluble colloid with the plasma protein. The compound in which silver is absorbed...has been variously regarded to be the albuminate, chloride or reduced metal. The best available experimental work on this subject has been done by Minz who injected Collargol into the bloodstream of a rabbit and analyzed the blood at intervals for silver salt, silver albumin, and metallic silver. He found that after one hour the plasma showed a decrease in silver salts and an increase in the silver present in combination with albumin. The amount of silver present as the colloidal salt diminished much more rapidly than did the silver albumin and he concluded that upon injection into the bloodstream the silver was changed to the albuminate quite rapidly, and taken up by the organs in this form." Matthew
