Fred R. Klenner

Frederick Robert Klenner (October 22, 1907 - May 20, 1984) was an American medical researcher and doctor in general practice in Reidsville, North Carolina. From the 1940s on he experimented with the use of vitamin C megadosage as a therapy for a wide range of illnesses, most notably polio. He authored 28 research papers during his career. He was one of the originators of orthomolecular medicine. Klenner is the subject or mentioned or referenced in a number of orthomolecular medicine related papers and articles.
Life and career
Klenner was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on October 22, 1907, to Mary (née Bewak) and Frank Klenner, the youngest of their eight children. His parents had come to the United States from Austria as children. When Fred was born, Frank and Mary were living on a farm near Johnstown, although Frank kept working at Bethlehem Steel Corporation, where he had worked since a young man. In 1908, Fred's 16-year-old sister Gertrude died from respiratory problems caused or aggravated by smoke spewing from blast furnaces at Johnstown's steel mills. It was said that Fred was a smart child — some said, the smartest of all the Klenner children, sensitive and earnest. In his free time he enjoyed playing in an Austrian band and could play several instruments, including the cornet, violin, harpsicord, zither, and piano. Klenner attended St. Vincent College for two years and St. Francis College now Saint Francis University, Loretto, Pennsylvania, where in 1931 he received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in biology. He was graduated with honors and was awarded a teaching fellowship. He was also awarded the college medal for scholastic philosophy. He then took another teaching fellowship in chemistry at Catholic University, where he studied for his doctorate in physiology.
In 1936, he was graduated from the Duke University School of Medicine. After three years of hospital training and his marriage to Annie Hill Sharp, sister of Susie Sharp, he entered private medical practice in her hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina. He continued to work there all his life.
In May 1946 in Reidsville, Dr. Klenner delivered the "Fultz Quadruplets", using his high vitamin C maternity regimen. Annie Mae Fultz, a deaf-mute woman married to Pete Fultz, a tenant farmer, gave birth to the quadruplet girls. He named all the girls after his family members. They were the first recorded set of identical African-American quadruplets and the first quadruplets to survive in the Southern United States. Klenner later brokered a deal with the PET milk company, a Saint Louis dairy, which provided the girls with PET milk formula, food, medical care, a private nurse, and a farm when they reached adulthood—in exchange for the right to use their images in PET milk advertisements.
Vitamin C studies
In 1949 Klenner published in and presented a paper to the American Medical Association detailing the complete cure of 60 out of 60 of his patients with polio using intravenous sodium ascorbate injection. Galloway and Seifert cited Klenner's presentation to the AMA in a paper of theirs.
Cure for tetanus
In September 1951, Dr. Klenner cured a 6-year-old boy of tetanus—also called lockjaw—by massive doses of vitamin C (sodium ascorbate) and the muscle-relaxant drug Tolserol (Mephenesin), both injected intravenously. Two days before admission to hospital, the boy's "abdominal muscles assumed boardlike rigidity abdominal pain… These episodes were being experienced more often while increasing in duration. His diet was self limited to liquids due to the inability to open his mouth more than 30%; this created pain at the temporomaxillary joint and was always followed by the sudden 'involuntary' clamping of his jaws. On the day of admission…the slightest stimulation would contract his back muscles with such force that he would form an arch with his body resting on his feet and head."
In the first 24 hours, Dr. Klenner gave the boy multiple injections of vitamin C—totaling 22 grams (22,000 mg)—spaced between three and five hours apart. He continued this regimen over the next 24 hours, injecting another 24 grams of vitamin C. The boy now had only mild abdominal cramps, his convulsive seizures relieved by intravenous injections of Tolserol. Dr. Klenner also gave the boy intermittent doses of penicillin and calcium gluconate, the latter to replace calcium possibly depleted by the vitamin C megadoses.
During the two-week hospital treatment, Dr. Klenner also tried five intravenous injections of tetanus antitoxin (T.A.T.), the most commonly used therapy for tetanus at that time. After each dose of antitoxin, the boy relapsed into severe abdominal pain. Dr. Klenner concluded that the antitoxin "has no curative value and at…best is harmful." On the other hand, he recommended a deep intramuscular injection of antitoxin above the puncture wound through which the tetanus and other toxic bacteria had invaded.
Medical case reports & scientific papers
Klenner described giving up to 300 grams (300,000 mg) per day of neutral pH sodium ascorbate. Klenner published 27 medical papers, most about vitamin C applications for over 30 diseases, two about treatment of severe neuropathies including multiple sclerosis using aggressive supplementation. He wrote a 28th paper ca 1980, an unpublished update about multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment. It was posthumously summarized by Lendon Smith in the Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C.
His maxim: the patient should "get large doses of vitamin C in all pathological conditions while the physician ponders the diagnosis."
He inspired Linus Pauling and Irwin Stone to expand the research on the wider benefits of Vitamin C. In the foreword of the Clinical Guide, Linus Pauling wrote: "The early papers by Dr. Fred R. Klenner provide much information about the use of large doses of Vitamin C in preventing and treating many diseases. These papers are still important."

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