Injured and needing a cure

By Rennie Phillips

I'll be turning 67 in January, so I've spent a few years here on this earth, and I have had a bunch of "boo-boos." Some were downright life-changing events, or at least seemed like it. Some were just knuckle busters where I lost some skin. And I have tried about everything to heal them. Times have changed down through the years, and so have the "cures."

Back during the time of Lewis and Clark, almost everyone was allowed to bleed to let the bad out. They also were given medicine to give them diarrhea -- it was thought a good cleaning out was beneficial. But even in the mid-1900s, a routine dose of castor oil was thought to make one more healthy.

Mom and Dad never used castor oil. Dallas talked about his mom dosing him up on a regular basis.

As a boy, I was always doing something I shouldn't have been. I didn't listen very well, so most of the time, I learned the hard way. I remember helping Dad one day in his outdoor shop. He was using the acetylene torch and the anvil. He was heating some pieces of iron, cutting some with the torch and bending some on the anvil.

Dad told me to be careful, that the iron was hot, but I didn't hear or didn't listen. It was hot -- real hot.

When I looked at my hand, I could see where my skin was burned. Dad got the kerosene and doused my hand with it. It took the burn out, at least for the moment. Those burn plants probably would have worked better, but we didn't have one back then.

Another time I was out in the grainery and I was trying to get a bird's nest that was up in the rafters. Dad had a sickle leaning up against the wall, and it was missing a few sections, so I decided to use the sickle as a ladder. It didn't work.

I sliced my knee pretty good, so Mom and Dad decided I needed stitches. Dr. Howel up in Hyannis stitched it up pretty good. Once I got the bandages off, it was time for the Merthiolate. I didn't do that again.

Scrapes or cuts and such were pretty common. Mom or Dad would break out the Merthiolate or even iodine and would proceed to put a good dose on the cut. You could guarantee we'd do a dance or jig about right then. It hurt, oh goodness that hurt. It was nothing like this gel or cream we use today. I guess for me the new cream or gel doesn't even seem like it's doing anything.

While I was going to college in McCook, I worked for a farmer south of town named Klein. He told me one day he was working in his barn cleaning it out with a pitch fork. At that time he was a teenager. Somehow he drove a tine of the fork through his foot from top to bottom. He said it was sticking out the bottom of his shoe. He finally got up the nerve to jerk the fork out of his foot, took off his shoe and checked out his foot. It was bleeding, of course. So he took a medicine dropper, filled it with turpentine, inserted the tip into the hole and squeezed. He said when he came to it had quit bleeding. It didn't get sore or infected. The turpentine probably killed every germ. He was a really nice guy. He played for Nebraska as a lineman. Big guy!

It seemed like back when I was little we used simple things to help us heal. Merthiolate antiseptic or peroxide were always used. So was soap. I had sores where Mom or Dad would take a little bar soap, soften it with a little water, add a little sugar and put it on a sore with a bandage over it. It would soften the sore spot up and kind of turn it white. It seemed to work. Dad also used horse liniments. He was always using Absorbine on cuts or scrapes or infections. Turpentine also seemed like it was used to clean out cuts and sores and such.

This last summer, I was mowing the yard and was going too fast and ran into one of our cherry bushes. Some of the branches were dead and I kind of poked the end of one into my arm. I pulled it out and wrapped my red hanky around my arm and finished mowing. I got to looking at it that evening and it kind of looked like maybe I still had some stick left in my arm. I wiped off my pocket knife and found a little piece of wood in my arm. I put some medical cream on it and thought it would heal. It didn't. So I dug in it some more and found some more twig. I did that one more time. Marge was after me to go see the doctor. This time I used the peroxide. I dribbled some on the sore and then put some of the medical salve on it. It healed first rate. I do wonder, though, if there isn't a little bit of stick still in there.

Then a couple weeks ago I had something bite me or sting my leg. I'm not real sure whether it was a bite or sting, so I'm not sure what caused it, but it proceeded to swell and get sore. It kind of made a bump. I remembered back when I was a kid, Dad would take a sore like this and use a pop bottle on it. Dad would heat up the bottom of the empty pop bottle and then stick the drinking end over the swelled place. Boy, when that bottle cooled, it sucked whatever was in that sore into the bottle.

Needless to say, I didn't do this to my 2016 sore. I did open it up and put some peroxide on it. By the next morning, the redness was pretty much gone, and it wasn't nearly as sore as it was.

It doesn't seem like peroxide or even Epsom salt are used like they used to be. Epsom salt used to be used to soak all kinds of hurts or boo-boos. Peroxide is one of my go-to cures. It seems like peroxide kind of boils out the infection. Just a personal observation. I need to ask my doctor about peroxide sometime.

About the same time I got the bug bite, my arms broke out in a rash that itched like crazy. I tried Caladryl, but I still itched. Marge thought I needed to go see the doctor, and I probably should have, but I had an idea that might work. I washed my arms real good with some of that orange hand cleaner with the pumice in it. I did that three times a day and then put some poison ivy treatment on it. The itch was gone the second day. I know that orange hand cleaner will take off almost anything. I should have gone to the doctor.

Until next time.