Posts Tagged ‘staph’
Boils Boils And Carbuncles
Boil or Carbuncle?
Let me tell you a true story.
It is only slightly gory.
It really is a tale of woe
But not because I want your dough.
Sorry about that, I do occasionally write daft poetry.
When I was 17/18 years old a boil erupted on my lower arm. After a few days my lower arm was badly swollen, despite the usual application of poultices. I then went to the doctor who gave me a prescription for penicillin. A further week went by during which the swelling got worse. On returning to the doctor he sent me to the hospital for treatment. Over the next two months I made numerous visits to the doctor and to the hospital without any improvement to my arm.
Finally my mother told me to go our local chemist who had a very good reputation. After telling him the whole sad story, he said that he needed to check exactly what is was and then removed the bandages. On revealing the ‘boil’ he immediately said that it was not a boil, but a carbuncle.
He also said that it was easily treated!
He then went around to the back of the shop and returned a few minutes later with a small bottle containing lots of small grey pills.
It cost me 2 shillings (10 new pence). That included supplying his own bottle, the label, his time spent on examinations and profit.
He told me to take all the tablets according to the instructions, and to return when the swelling had gone down.
The following morning the swelling had reduced considerably, and by the third day all the swelling had gone, just leaving the original ‘boil’.
Re-examination by the chemist revealed a 1″ diameter open wound with 3/4″ diameter yellow core of Jelly like consistency, which he immediately dug out with some difficulty.
By the end of the week the only sign of the carbuncle was a small scar, which I still have.
What did I learn from our local chemist about carbuncles?
Most of the knowledge about carbuncles came from experiences in the two world wars. He did say that the ‘Multi-headed boil’ description was false and that carbuncles could be single or multi-headed. (I managed to work out why later.)
I have had many carbuncles over the years. One possible reason is that I am susceptible to them. The main reason is that in the early days I got them by being in the wrong place, which is old attics. During the First World War many British soldiers were fighting in old houses and other buildings, many of which were severely damaged. They were covered in the dust from attics and roofs. and quickly infected with boils and/or carbuncles. In the Second World War people in bomb damaged areas were infected with boils and/or carbuncles.
Before this carbuncles were not unknown, but were considered to be just another type of boil, the main difference being that in many cases the carbuncles proved to be fatal.
The first five times I got them after doing work in old attics. but these were rapidly cured without much bother. Since then I have been unable to obtain the necessary remedy and so have had to go through months of aggravation, changing dressings 2/3 times a day. My last one (about 8 years ago) lasted 16 months and cost me £100′s in dressings plus £100′s in subsidised antibiotics plus continual supplies of vitamin supplements.
How to Identify a Carbuncle.
Simplest and quickest test is just to tap on it with your finger. If there is a sharp pain it is probably a boil. If it gives a burning sensation, similar to that caused by holding a cigarette end close to the skin, it is almost certainly a carbuncle. A boil is nearly always more painful than a carbuncle. This is one of the reasons for the ‘multi-headed boil’ problem. You can have a carbuncle for many days without realising it, but a boil makes its present felt immediately. A carbuncle can reach the bursting stage before you become aware of it.
When a carbuncle bursts the infection gets smeared across the skin which then creates more ‘heads’. The human body creates a protective film around the site of a boil or carbuncle to prevent the infection spreading and to confine the ‘safety valve’ nature of it to one location. If any of the infected pus from a carbuncle is smeared outside this protected area, new sattelite carbuncles start. Contact with this pus can start infections in healthy people, as happened once with my wife. (Luckily for me, the cure was still available at this time.)
If the first infection head is properly ‘dressed’, further heads are prevented.
A second identifier is that boils ‘throb’, carbuncles don’t, another reason why they get ignored.
A third identifier for carbuncles is the ‘core’, the yellow hard jelly like centre. In boils the yellow centre remains liquid and normally comes out first on bursting. In carbuncles the yellow centre remains until you physically extract it.
Treatment
The only effective treatment is no longer available in Britain. I have had a prescription for 8 years that I have been unable to have made up despite trying many pharmacists, medical supply companies and even one of the companies that used to manufacture them. (They did not even have a record of ever having made them, even though I have an old empty bottle of theirs.)
The original treatment was a compound of tin and tin oxide in tablet form.
Each tablet contains the following:-
Tin Powder – 0.10625grammes
Stannous Oxide – 0.01875 grammes
Day 1 – 16 tablets (4 + 4 + 4 + 4 )
Day 2 – 14 Tablets (4 + 4 + 3 + 3 )
Day 3 – 12 Tablets. (3 + 3 + 3 + 3)
Day 4 – 10 Tablets. (3+ 3 +2 + 2 )
Day 5 – 8 Tablets. (2 + 2 + 2 + 2 )
Day 6 – 6 Tablets. (2 + 2 + 1 + 1 )
Days 7 /8/9 and 10 as Day 6
The bracketed numbers indicate the number of tablets to be taken at intervals over the day. It is always best to space them at 6 hour intervals, but it is not crucial.
Why the Cure has been missed by the medical profession.
Manufactures started marking the the tablets “For use against boils and carbuncles”, but they were totally ineffective against boils. So much for the manufacturers ‘expertise’. Even today they still use the term “for Boils and Carbuncles” on commercial products. Tin and its oxide do not work on boils, antibiotics do not work on carbuncles.
Doctors were using them for boils, found they did not work, therefore stopped prescribing them. Doctors did not know the differences between boils and carbuncles. It is possible that some doctor had diagnosed a carbuncle as a boil (because it only had a single head) and prescribed stannous oxide, found that it worked, and advised other doctors of this. Later it became obvious that it did not work on real boils and was discontinued.
Having spent many hours over the years discussing carbuncles with members of the medical profession, including dermatologists, I have still not met one who knew the difference. Nor have I met one who had ever had a carbuncle.
Doctors, like many people, generally only learn what they are taught, and what little I have found about carbuncles in medical publications has been very sketchy. Case studies are almost non-existent ( Who wants to read a case study on carbuncles? Therefore why should I do one?) To be honest I’ve not managed to find one yet.
General.
The use of metallic oxides in medicine has received a lot of attention in recent years, particularly in regard to viral infections.
The fact that streptococcus (the claimed cause of boils and carbuncles) is unaffected by tin oxides, clearly indicates that carbuncles are not caused by streptococcus. (This from my experience that anti-streptococcus injections and pills had no effect on carbuncles.) Note that they may have been helpful in that they cleared a lot of streptococcus from the system.
There is a bit of confusion here. When the body is attacked by ‘nasties’, its immune system goes into overdrive. The white blood cells move into action attempting to destroy every kind of ‘nasty’ they can find. The white blood cells will, if possible, kill everything they recognize as a ‘nasty’. Streptococcus is something they recognize and can usually destroy. If you are infected with anything, streptococcus will be found, if only by collateral damage, (they may not be what is causing the problem but will be killed anyway.)
The white blood cells may not even recognize what is actually causing the infection, and therefore ignore it. It is possible that carbuncles are caused by viruses. It may be that streptococcus are carriers of viruses.
It is also possible that the virus responsible for Legionaire’s Disease is the same virus, or similar, to that causing carbuncles. The similarities in origin, attic dust and ventilation dust, would indicate that some further investigation is needed. It would also give the possibility of stannous oxide as a cure for Legionaire’s Disease. Modern ducting systems, using inert materials like plastics or stainless steel, do not have the advantage of having a inner coating of metal oxides (Zinc Oxide) that the traditional galvanised steel has.
It would be nice if Stannous Oxide was available again. because I’ve always had the feeling that carbuncles would eventually kill me.
The only side effect I ever had was that I had to do household tasks sooner.
From authors website www//physicsorfantasy.co.uk
About the Author
www//physicsorfantasy.co.uk
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