Awright, you made me do a deeper dive. So I did. I couldn’t find “Ich tha mmol” used as a trade name, in my old catalogs before about 1970. It was before then that my family was buying the ingredients for “black salve” and mixing their own.
The ingredient they were buying was apparently “Ich thy canth ol”. Looks like my Mom left off the “ol” last time she wrote it dowm. This stuff goes back to the late 19th century and was developed by a fella named Paul Gerson. Fortunately just in time to help my Gramma. The two things are the same and just vary by concentration in various brands with the old name being lost along the way.
My Gramma was born in 1890 and got rattlesnake bit just before she started school about 1896. Her Dad thot he should stop the bleeding with his hand, hitched a wagon, and got her to a doctor which saved her. But stopping the bleeding is not a good idea for snake bite and it left her with a recurring ulcer type spot all her life.
Shortly after she started school at the Bloomfield boarding school in the Chickasaw Nation territory in S. Oklahoma. So she had to nurse her own leg occasionally. It was the neighborhood postman who saw the family having trouble treating her and brought the “mix” for the drawing salve. Way before there was a commercial preparation.
I seems that the “canth” portion of the original name does refer to the oil shale probably since the shale would have been formed at the bottom of a really old sea bed.
One of the recommended uses early on was to treat “leg ulcers” which described Gramma’s occasional leg eruption. And it still works. I’ll keep a file in case it comes up again.
Isn’t “Ichthycanth” an extinct fish?
Looks like a sow bug...
My 1960 World Book Ecyclopedia says the following:
“ICHTHYOL is the trade name of a drug prepared from certain hydrocarbon or mineral shales. It is a dark-brown, thick liquid. Ichthyol gets its name from the scientific name for fish, because the shale contains fossil remains of fishes. Ichthyol is prepared by distilling the shale, treating it with sulphur, and neutralizing it. Ichthyol, which is really ichthyolsulphonate, is used as an antiseptic and as a soothing, skin preparation. It is also used in treating boils.”
Fascinating stuff there, OWB, thanks for the research! I enjoyed reading about the history of your Gramma and the healing medicine and all that good info.
Real medicine, real cures. What we need!
Mrs. K : )