to the Healing of soul and body...
By Emanuel Kolyvas, M.D., The Sign [of the Theotokos], Montreal

Contrary to popular opinion, wine, and other beverages of antiquity
produced through fermentation, were probably more important in
providing disease-free drinking fluids than in their tendency to
intoxicate. Ancient Greeks drank their water mixed with wine, and
also used wine to cleanse wounds and soak dressings. More recently,
military physicians of the last century observed that during epidemics
of cholera, wine drinkers were relatively spared by the disease, and
troops were advised to mix wine into the water.

Wine has been shown to be an effective antiseptic even when the
alcohol is removed. In fact, 10% alcohol is a poor antiseptic, and
alcohol only becomes optimally effective at concentrations of 70%.
The antiseptic substances in wine are inactive in fresh grapes because
these molecules are bound to complex sugars. During fermentation
these antiseptic substances are split off from the sugars and in this
way become active. These molecules are polyphenols, a class of
substances used in hospitals to disinfect surfaces and instruments.
The polyphenol of wine has been shown to be some thirty-three times
more powerful than the phenol used by Lister when he pioneered
antiseptic surgery.

Same year wines can be diluted up to ten times before beginning to
show a decrease in their antiseptic effect. The better wines
gradually improve with age over the first ten years and can be diluted
twenty times without a decrease of the antiseptic effect. This effect
then remains more or less constant over the next twenty years and
becomes equivalent to a new wine after another twenty-five years.
(Modern antiseptics and antibiotics for disinfecting wounds have
surpassed wine effectiveness because the active ingredients in wine
are rapidly bound and inactivated by proteins in body tissues.)

In preparing communion, the hot water that is added to the wine will
increase greatly the antiseptic effect of the polyphenols
Disinfection occurs more rapidly and more effectively at 45 degrees
centigrade than at room temperature (22-25 degrees). Another
contribution to the antiseptic effect comes from the silver, copper,
zinc that make up the chalice itself, ensuring that microbes are
unable to survive on its surface.

Throughout the centuries n o disease has ever been transmitted by
the taking of Holy Communion. Diseases, such as Hepatitis B, known to
be transmitted by shared eating utensils, have never been acquired
from the communion spoon. HIV is known not to be transmitted through
shared eating utensils, and considering the antiseptic qualities of
the Holy Communion received by the faithful, there is no likelihood of
acquiring HIV infection through the Common Cup.