This book represents the first serious attempt to explain the fundamental basis of ozonetherapy and is a relevant step towards achieving further progress. Ozone is now considered a real drug and, after reacting with body fluids, releases messengers and activates several mechanisms which are able to elicit multiple biological effects. The therapeutic window has been defined and, contrary to the dogma that ozone is toxic any way you deal with it', it has been shown that ozone toxicity can be tamed and even totally avoided.

New powerful methodologies have been devised and astonishing clinical results in vascular and infectious diseases have already been achieved. An exciting novelty is the induction of an adaptive response that implies the unsuspected possibility of arresting cell degeneration due to endogenous chronic oxidative stress. However, further basic and controlled clinical studies need to be performed to fully exploit ozone's therapeutic potentials and to establish the real validity of this therapy. Authoritative scientists and clinicians should abandon their prejudice and consider the profound difference between endogenous oxidative stress and the new concept of ozonetherapeutic shock'. If this happens, we could soon have a simple and inexpensive tool to restore health in millions of patients.

This book has been written in a plain scientific language and can be read by scientists and clinicians, as well as by patients keen on regaining a state of well being.

When I was about fifteen, my Biological Seiences teacher, Prof. N. Benacchio, lent me a book by Paul de Kruif "The Microbe Hunters" and I remained fascinated by infectious diseases. I was intrigued by the potency of virulent bacteria which are constantly trying to invade our bodies and often overcome what today we call innate and adoptive immunity. Indeed, shortly after that, I was struck by his tragic death due to peritonitis. Later, while studying medicine (although medical knowledge in the 1950s was almost primordial compared with today), I soon realised how the various biological systems were wonderfully organised but at the same time frail and how our life could end in a few minutes. Slowly it became obvious that our "wellness" was the result of a dynamic and very unstable equilibrium between health and disease. This unstable equilibrium could be broken forever if the body's response could not reverse the pathological state. I stuck a sort ofposter on the wall ofmy room with these three words and connecting arrows: HEALTH -? DISEASE -? DEATH As I don't believe in another world after death, it became obvious to me that we should make every possible effort not only to delay death, but to try always to shift the equilibrium to the left. In this book, I will try to show that this can be achieved, as a last resort, even with ozonetherapy.