Rinsing and Gargling Can Only Help

Dr. Ed MacMahon

Photo by Leonard Shapiro

Rinsing and Gargling Can Only Help

By Leonard Shapiro

While the whole wide world waits for researchers around the globe to develop a vaccine with potential to combat the current COVID-19 pandemic, a longtime and now retired local physician has some plain-spoken advice as a possible stop-gap measure.

It’s called Listerine, the antiseptic mouthwash that also has a bit of local history, as well, including a tie to the late Bunny Mellon. More on that later.

Dr. Ed MacMahon, who lives near The Plains, was one of the Washington area’s pre-eminent orthopedic specialists for many years. In retirement, he’s never stopped studying science, reading medical journals and perusing the internet for information on a wide variety of medical subjects. Dr. Ed MacMahon

In recent years, he’s become an expert on scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, and in recent months, this still inquisitive 91-year-old has tried to find out as much as he can about COVID.

Among a myriad of sources, he’s spent a lot of time looking at a new online medical journal website called Function that is associated with Oxford University, Dr. MacMahon has read several medical papers that make perfect sense to him. They involve the benefit of both rinsing and gargling with Listerine, first developed nearly 150 years ago.

“Any virus starts in the mouth,” Dr. MacMahon said in a recent interview. “People who are asymptomatic are generally functioning normally. When the virus gets into the lungs, that’s where the real problem is, especially for older people. Then it becomes a tug of war between the virus and the lungs, and usually the lungs lose out.

“Some of the (Oxford) research indicates that early intervention can be critical. You get it in the early stages and it holds up the virus and helps keep it from getting into the lungs.”

And so, Dr. MacMahon (and others) recommends an early intervention that includes first rinsing with Listerine, swishing it throughout mouth and between the teeth. After spitting out the rinse, it’s on to another mouthful, this time for gargling to help protect the upper throat, as well. And, of course, he added, it remains imperative to wear a mask, constantly wash your hands and keep socially distancing.

“I think what we’ve learned from the first wave is a cheap way of treating the second wave,” Dr. MacMahon said, emphasizing that Listerine is by no means a blanket COVID cure, but simply an effective way to help kill off some of the virus before it gets to dangerous locations in the body.

As for the local Listerine connection, Bunny Mellon’s father, pharmaceutical magnate Gerard Barnes Lambert, also was a driving force behind the advertising agency of Lambert and Feasley, which was extremely effective in promoting Listerine into a still widely-used product. Lambert purchased the Carter Hall estate in Millwood in 1930, and that’s where Bunny Mellon once lived. Gerard Lambert later became president of Gillette Safety Razor Company and was instrumental in developing the popular Gillette Blue Blade razor. In recent years, Carter Hall also was the home of Project Hope, the nonprofit, international health and humanitarian organization that was based there from 1978 to 2018, when it was put up for sale.