Drawing ointment. Who remembers it?

I bought some Zam Buk from Amazon not long ago. The tin seems smaller but the colour is the same - dark green. My mother used to put it on my scraped knees when I fell as a small child. Don't know if it can draw a spinter- on young people they come out quickly anyway. But Zam Buk has been in use since around 1900.

Elaine1 I remembe Kaolin poultices when I was a student Nurse, and Kaolin and Morph liquid medicin, I had a feeling that was for diarrhea, so long ago I cant remember.This is all showing my age.

I had a thorn from a hawthorn hedge in my thumb this week. Very painful, so I found the bicarb tip online.
The paste inside a sealed plaster overnight did the trick. Soaked my hand in the morning then gave a squeeze to the sore area, and out it popped! Great relief!

Love the mention of gentian violet, my late mother in law trained in nursing pre war. About twenty years ago a young sexually relative came to her for advice having got pubic lice(crabs). She shaved off his pubic hairs and anointed the suspect areas with gentian violet. I think we can all picture this. Needless to say when he did go to the GP it did cause a lot of discussion/stifled mirth. Did it ever work?

My mother always had in something from Boots called Ucal ointment. Seems an odd name. Pale yellow, stiffish paste in small jar. What can it have been? Dunno.

For bigger problems with pus etc, buy some poultices from a saddlery and cut them to size.
Work wonders on hoof abcesses etc.

Glad you can still buy it, we always had a pot in the cupboard when I was a child. Also had Collis Browne liquid for upset stomach and bowels, and Kaolin and morphine which I seem to remember was chalky? Or was that the blue bottle of Milk of Magnesia?

Sorry should have written sexually active.

My mum used something that sounded like "click ums", I never saw it written down but thats what it sounded like. It was a yellow paste and she put some on a piece of lint and warmed it by the fire then stuck it on the affected area.
Next morning a small squeeze and out popped the splinter (or the boil/pimple burst). Sounds like the same thing.

It was probably Glickons Salve. It was a stick which my mother warmed in a gas flame and smeared on to a plaster. Very effective.

oh yes definitely remember kaolin poultice, mum and nan had to use it plenty of times when i was young, usually for splinters in hands and legs - friends has a wooden rail outside their back door going into the back garden, they lived upstairs in a flat, so of course we all used to slide down it!

My mother also did warm kaolin paste on boils..

Mag sulphate paste heat it very gently as it gets hot super quickly and pop it on the problem

I used to bite my nails as a child, and often had witlows. My Nan used to put hot kaolin poultices on my sore finger ( and always promised to dip my fingers into hot horseradish if I didn’t stop biting my nails).

My mother always had a cake of the green Fairy soap by the kitchen sink. Mostly it was used for rubbing on my brother’s shirt collars before they were washed, but if we had a splinter or bits of gravel in a cut she would cut off a piece of the soap then mix it with sugar crystals and use that as a poultice.

Yes I remember my mum having an ancient looking tin with drawing paste in - no idea what it was called but I loved the smell! I had no idea you could still buy it, I’ve always used a scraping from a wet soap bar mixed with some sugar and held in place with a plaster, it always seemed to do the trick if my DC ever got a splinter

Lizbethann55

This morning my DD got a splinter in her finger. It turns out that she can't cope with splinters ! So my DH had to rescue our DD by removing it with my best eyebrow tweezers, while she screwed up her face and looked the other way. ( We will ignore the fact that she is in her late 30s!) But it reminded me of when we were little, if we got a splinter " drawing ointment " was put on the afflicted part of the body. Does anyone know what "drawing ointment " actually was and whether or not it actually worked?

MAGNESIUM SULPHATE or Mag.Sulf for short it works!

A straight forward plaster left on for a couple of hours softens the skin and brings the splinter to the surface making it much easier to pluck out.

Sugar and soap on a plaster does the trick - the only useful piece of advice my MIL ever gave me.

Oh yes! And poultices made of soap. I was a dispenser in a pharmacy and we sold magnesium sulphate ointment!

We used soap flakes dissolved in as hot water as the sufferer could stand for drawing out spinters. You sat with afflicted part in a basin of hot water.

Kaolin poultices were used for colds that "had gone to the chest" and my sister's chronic bronchitis.

Not for splinters. But I remember having fallen over (twice) with horrible cuts and grazing to both knees including dirt and grit in the wounds and Mum using some awful yellow ointment to try to draw the grit out.
Mum was most annoyed as being allergic to plasters I ended up with huge crepe bandages round each knee and we had a family wedding to go to!!

I also remember a boil on my outer thigh. And that was drawn with regular bathing with near boiling water and pink lint. Pink lint was lint impregnated with boracic acid.

I'm told superglue works.

The ointment that you may be talking about was called bazillicin ointment. My mother used to use it when we were young for splinters etc. Excellent stuff but don't think that you can get it now. Magnesium sulphate is just as good.

Squiffy

Brilliant stuff! I use it for drawing out post-gardening thorns and splinters.

Wonderful little rose thorns are the bane of my life, I'll try it after I've pruned this year