We’ve made great strides in technology and in medicine in more recent times. However, except for these—we were probably better off back then!!!!
A few years ago my Stepfather had a pretty severe infection that started with a cut on his hand and began moving up his arm. He went to the Doctor multiple times and took any number of prescriptions none of which worked. Having grown up in the 1950’s on a farm in upstate NY he finally tried a home remedy.
He took a raw egg, cracked it open, carefully pulled a piece of the thin skin that typically stays attached to the eggshell and laid it on the source of the infection. He repeated this over the course of a few days and the infection was completely gone.
His Doctor was completely amazed.
As it turns out, this “eggshell skin” literally sucked the infection out of his arm as it dried. He told me that he could actually feel it being drawn out of is arm.
Note: His “infection may have been some type of “poisoning”, like lead poison or something but I’m not sure.
My great grandmother Grace (actually the great Grandfathers 5th or 6th wife, the prior having died on him) was just about the twin of the old “granny” character on the porch at the river crossing in the “Outlaw Josey Wales”.
I got stung on the chest by a yellow jacket when I stopped to investigate (with rocks and sticks of course) a nest that had been dug up on the way down the hill to their place. On arrival the first thing she did was pull some snuff out of her mouth and pat it on that sting with the admonishment that it would “act like a poultice and suck the poison out”.
The sting did go away fairly quickly.