Winter Burns

The other day I accidentally touched the chimney of our wood-burning stove and ended up with a painful burn on my arm. It brought back memories of when my girls were little and Vanessa had fallen against my parent’s wood-burning stove (over 20 years ago). We’d done the cold water treatment and  all was good while she was awake as she could keep her fingers in the glass of cold water in which Epsom salts were dissolved until saturation, but as soon as she fell asleep the fingers came out and the pain was back again. At this time I was doing a course of study in Herbs and I thank God that I had the book Practical Home Healing with me. It contained many stories of how to use simple ingredients at home to ease small burns and other simple illnesses like sore throats etc.

One of the amazing stories was about treating simple burns. A burn destroys the human tissue by overheating it. The CSIRO used a technique called atomic absorption measurement to make very accurate chemical analyses of various substances and found that there was a dramatic loss of magnesium in burn victims. The destruction of the tissue of a burn causes the dead tissue to become toxic to the body so the first task is to draw off the poisons to prevent their circulation through the system. Secondly, external oxygen must be kept away from the burned areas because oxygen accelerates the decomposition of tissue. The third objective is to replace the depleted supply of magnesium.

Thus the Epsom salts in cool water replace the magnesium while the water helps cool the burn and keeps the oxygen out.

All well and good until she fell asleep! That’s when I remembered another story that described how in India (where many people used little kerosene burners for cooking) the restaurants donated all their potato peelings to the local hospitals for use on burns victims because of their high magnesium levels. So we wrapped Vanessa’s fingers with some large slices of potato and bandaged it on for the night. By morning, there were no blisters, no redness and no pain! Thank God!

I had already done all the cooling with water on my burn and later tried the potato slices but it wasn’t enough, so I peeled a long piece of Aloe Vera and bandaged that to my arm for the night! The relief was instant and I was able to sleep through the night as well! No pain, no blisters and no redness by the morning.

A couple of months ago my second daughter burned herself when her griller fell onto her arm and even after lots of cooling under the tap it was still painful even with the Aloe Vera, so the hospital was the best place for her to go to have the burn properly dressed and treated. The nursing staff commended her on her earlier treatment as it saved her a lot of pain and grief for later.

Another time, whilst cooking, I was foolish enough to leave my cooking fork leaning against the frypan, and as I was hungry, I took the fork and the little piece of food stuck on it, into my mouth and burned both my lips and tongue.

The pain was terrible but I was able to suck on a few pieces of potato for a couple of hours until it was all better. The magnesium was replaced by the potato; it also cooled the burned tissue and kept it cool whenever a new piece was introduced. Thank you simple potato!

Obviously, if someone does get a bad burn it needs to be cooled first under lots of cool running water, and then bandaged to stop the oxygen from entering. Please use your common sense and get burns victims to the hospital as they can be extremely painful! My suggestions are only for little minor burns and not for any thing else, maybe just to keep you going until you can get to hospital!

So please, as this cold winter season is here, please, please be careful around wood-burning stoves and heaters and keep safe!