One of the treatments we use in the jungle (since there is a paucity of medical professionals) to treat jungle ulcers on the skin is to pack the ulcer with table sugar. It is amazing how quickly it works.
Back in the old days of American medicine we used straight sugar on the wound to treat bedsores. Very effective.
Sugar at very high concentrations is a bacteriacide.
That would work because the osmotic shock of exposing the bacteria to the high sugar environment would kill them. (In simple language: the sugar would "pull out" the water from inside the bacteria, killing them.)
I’ve used sugar for years on cuts and scrapes and it speeds healing measurably. The old remedy was honey and I hear that works well too.
“treatments we use in the jungle”
I remember seeing that work. I thought it was because the sugar created an environment that crenated (shrivelled) the offending organisms and shrunk (sucked the extra fluid out of) the swollen cells, thus increasing the circulation and immunomodulatory access to the area.
How does it REALLY work?