Saturday, January 07, 2012
Each month on Health Central’s skin care site, we select one member question to ask of our consulting dermatologist, Dr. Lawrence Green. In this post we are going to be discussing boils. Boils are a common skin infection usually caused by the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, but can also caused ...
It’s funny, when I was a young boy, with serious acne, I used to get huge boils around my mouth and elsewhere. Terrible. But my mother always used to use a black substance which was manufactured and came in a stick form that you held to a match so it melted and you rubbed it onto a bandage or band aid and covered the boil or infection. This was called, and I remember it well, "Wooly Salve."
I don’t know what was in it but it drew the pus out of the wound. I remember having one on my hand, an infection. You could always tell when it worked, you actually felt a series of tugs in that area… when you removed the bandage there was the pus on the bandage and the wound was clean, in this case a hole was in my hand, but clean. I remember because I was sitting at a desk in Parochial school when that one happened, and I looked! lol
They don’t sell it anymore. I did get this tube of a black substance from a pharmacy which is cream and not needing melted called, Ichthammol Ointment 20%, which works in a similar way. You probably can’t buy it anymore either. I’ve had it a long time. While the Wiki has it being used for humans, Drugs.com lists it as being used for horses!
So maybe the doctor is right.
Horses you say? My goodness.
I had no idea about these types of salves or remedies. It would be interesting to know the history of these medications and why they were taken off the pharmacy shelves.
Thank you so much for your comment! It was very interesting and enlightening.