Drawing ointment. Who remembers it?

Bread poultice i.e. starch is good for "drawing out" the products of inflammation but I doubt any ointment will remove a foreign body.

Long ago doctors believed in a "laudable pus" . A laudable pus which forms around a foreign body will flush out the foreign body when the pus evacuates.

I have tried to buy Golden Eye ointment, it's sold out everywhere. When I asked in Boots, the pharmacist told me she had sold the last one to the woman in front of me.
The power of Gransnet! ?

One of my little fingers got on infection along side the nail. Slightly painful, but red and swelling showed the infection. Came to mind about this thread.
THEN.....I remembered a very basic 'drawing' technique for such infections and have been soaking that finger every few hours in a small bowl of hot water with lots of salt in it.
Even this first day, the effect is almost miraculous, and I should think that within 48 hours will be totally healed.

Salt is a wondrous healing compound - best way of treating any minor cut/would or infection.

I agree with SuDonim, mag sulph.

I can remember buying some stuff called Lion Ointment. It was good for all kinds of things.

Remembered the name of the yellow sealking wax type salve. Glickens Salve., as I recall from MANY MANY years ago.
Splendid for drawing out splinters, and once the heat wa sover, less painful thatn digging with a needle!

My mother would work sugar into softish household soap making a paste which was applied to the splinter. I seem to remember it always worked.

Tea tree oil is good for drawing out splinters etc and is absolutely brill for whitlows! Do kids still get those now? What about impetigo? You can tell I’m old - sadly surrounded by quite a few young snowflakes!

I think that’s magnesium sulphate. Always have some in the cupboard and yes, very effective.

Another user of E.Burgess Lion Ointment, in a wooden tub.

I bought some a few years ago . I had a breast abscess which was drained and cleaned in hospital. A few weeks later it came back and I couldn’t be bothered going back to hospital so I made a poultice and slapped it on inside my bra then went to work . It was a bit sore and uncomfortable but when I got home my bra was full of blood and pus but my boob was much better

As a child, my mother would either slap a Kaolin poultice or a mustard poultice on me to relieve my asthma

I love Epsom salts.
They're lovely in a nice hot bath.

Magnesium Sulphate is Epsom Salts, so you may have some tucked at the back of a cupboard....

Widgeon - I remember being prescibed "pot cit" for
urinary infections when I was a child. It was the most horrible medicine I had ever tasted. It was light green in colour and tasted like ginger beer that had gone off.
I remember having a septic finger after it being pricked by a needle and my mother applying what she called mag sulph. It did do the trick though and healed the finger.
My mother had been a nurse pre-war and always used these abbreviations.

Magnesium Sulphate, never without a pot, splinters, spots, boils, in growing hairs, wonderful stuff!!

Another one for Mag Sulph Paste. It was used in hospital when I was a student nurse in the 60s. I always have a jar in the medicine cabinet and recently gave it to a neighbour to remove a thorn. He was most impressed and his daughter, an A&E nurse had never heard of bit! My mother always used a kaolin poultice or, in emergency, a bread poultice! She poured boiling water over white bread, applied it to a lint bandage with gauze over it, when cool enough to bear applied to the offending splinter,thorn or whatever. I suppose it was the starch in the bread which worked.

Parts of my childhood was around stables and whenever the ponies trod on something that led to infection. They would mix a hot bran mash and pile into a tea towel and tie it over the affected hoof! Also my dad used to mash soap up with sugar and apply that to infected human fingers, it was brilliant!

We called it a poultice, but used it for something that had become inflamed. My dad used to make up one with bread soaked in hot water… and we called splinters “skelfs”… but then we are Scottish!

Used to apply kaolin poultices to patients in hospital in the 1960s. Chest infections, bronchitis etc. Kaolin is I think still used in some mouthwashes to help when mouth is tender due to radiotherapy. Never heard of the "drawing" cream, will keep it in mind though.

I have had a tube of icthamol drawing ointment in my medicine box for about 35 years, took the lid off just now, it smells exactly how I remember it, just like melts tarmac.

i still use it for rose thorns and splinters

pensionpat

I remember Black Jack always in the cupboard. Don’t know if it was a “drawing” thing.

My mother-in-law always used Black Jack as a drawing paste. No idea what was in it but it worked!

GillT57

Do people still get boils?

Have you never watched Dr Pimplepopper? ?