The 1945 edition of Dorvault still devotes an entire paragraph to snails, indicating that the therapeutic usage of snails was still alive. Although one could think that this was the end of the medical career of snails, this was indeed not the case, since several scientific articles re-launched the subject once again. In France, Quevauviller prepared a relatively exhaustive review of snail therapeutic properties in 1953 and related the use of snail syrup in the 1920s for patients with chronic bronchitis (14). The author emphasized that ‘if no one even thinks about using such a therapy for tuberculosis, recent research has confirmed the sedative properties of several formulations based on Helix pomatia for whooping cough and chronic bronchitis, related to the antispasmodic and fluidizing properties of the secretions’. For the first time, the actual preparation of the product is described: ‘One can find presently several extracts of mucus (helicidine, pertussidine, pomaticine) that differ from each other only by their production processes. Most often, one soaks the snails with 1% ww of sodium chloride. Mucus is then collected, settled, filtrated, concentrated and then dried according to various processes, either at low temperature under vacuum evaporation, or freeze dried or spray dried. The resulting aqueous solutions can then be retained aseptically within sterile vials after filtration through specific filters, or by adding antiseptic substances, the most used being glycerine. The various chemical components of Helix can also be analysed using enzyme procedures thus revealing: more than 30 enzymes within the digestive mucus and several enzymes within the pancreostomach, the muscle, and lymphatic fluid’.
Quevauviller then also reviewed the pharmacological activities of H.pomatia mucus: in vitro mucolytic activity, its inhibiting effect on Brolet and Gaugon bacteria and spasmolytic activity in the respiratory tract. The author concluded that ‘the antispasmodic activities of Helix mucus on the bronchial tree can been observed only at high doses, far from any therapeutic doses. We then do not consider that this musculotropic effect could explain the sedation that results from fits of whooping cough. It is most probably the previously described mucolytic and bacteriolytic properties that are responsible for the clinical observations.’ The author establishes a link with the therapeutic usage of gastric and intestinal pork mucins ‘which are still used in therapy’ (14). This usage is actually described by Monceaux in 1933