Home Made Salve

[waksupi]

Dick's Salve

1# mutton or cow tallow
1/2 pt. sweet oil (olive oil)
pine rosin the size of a large egg. (Baseball rosin would work great)

Cook together until it starts smoking.

(You are heating it this much, to make the oil molecules polymerize. If it is like other formulas I make, it usually needs about a half hour of constant stirring to really do a good job. Control that heat!)

Then remove from stove, and while constantly stirring,

add 1 pint turpentine (did I mention this is a good thing to make outside?)
and 1 oz. carbolic acid (Search Phenol on Ebay.)

Keep stirring until completely blended. It will start setting up as it cools, and will stay mixed once it starts stiffening.

Should be heated to liquid form to use. Immerse clean white bandage, apply to wound as hot as you can stand, and secure for 24 hours. Change and repeat if necessary.
On serious infection, can be used constantly changing bandage, as salve cools completely.
This is some pretty harsh stuff, and not to be smeared all over you. Keep it localized on the wound. I believe it was originally developed for veterinary use by one of my ancestors.

I used it a couple months ago on a wart. Used a Q-tip to apply. I didn't heat it for this. The wart was totally gone in a week, with no scar.

The ingredients aren't all that hard to round up. Once you make a batch, you have a lifetime supply. I still have a small amount left that grandma and I made, that must be nearly 50 years old. I recall it was put up in a small Skippy jar, so was probably a half batch.

[horsesoldier]

Do you have a recipe for hand creme using bear fat as a base?

[waksupi]

I would think the bear fat by itself should be fine. I just coated a leather shooting bag with it this morning, and my hands are kissable soft. [smilie=f:

[horsesoldier]

lol Thank you.I noticed the same when I skinning it!

[oscarflytyer]

You can purchase similar. Check out Watkins Petro-Carbo Salve. Best I have ever used! Used it for years! Actually saved my hand and lower arm years ago - infection from a briar scratch and dressing a deer! It will also draw out a splinter. Much nicer than digging it out! Bad mangles heal MUCH faster using this as well. I chunked the end of my finger on a Sat doing a brake job, with nasty stuff int he wound. Two days of salve, and was healed up by the next Saturday! Just awesome stuff.

http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/j.r.-watkins-petro-carbo-salve/ID=prod6097807-product?ext=gooMedicines_ampersand_Treatments_PLA_ Oils_Gels_and_Salves_prod6097807_pla&adtype={adtype}&kpid=prod6097807&sst=6c90144a-a6d0-2a88-cac6-00001bd033cf

[Garyshome]

Have to look into this stuff. Always need something like this available.

[Dale in Louisiana]

You can purchase similar. Check out Watkins Petro-Carbo Salve. Best I have ever used! Used it for years! Actually saved my hand and lower arm years ago - infection from a briar scratch and dressing a deer! It will also draw out a splinter. Much nicer than digging it out! Bad mangles heal MUCH faster using this as well. I chunked the end of my finger on a Sat doing a brake job, with nasty stuff int he wound. Two days of salve, and was healed up by the next Saturday! Just awesome stuff.

http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/j.r.-watkins-petro-carbo-salve/ID=prod6097807-product?ext=gooMedicines_ampersand_Treatments_PLA_ Oils_Gels_and_Salves_prod6097807_pla&adtype={adtype}&kpid=prod6097807&sst=6c90144a-a6d0-2a88-cac6-00001bd033cf

Ah, yes! Petro-Carbo. Brings back memories. the Watkins man was a monthly visit to many a home 'out in the country' when I was growing up. They sold medicinal remedies like Petro-Carbo as well as spices and such.

Petro-Carbo was just about a universal remedy for scrapes and cuts. Watkins liniment (I seem to remember it was light blue) was good for achy, sore muscles and joints.

Dad was also a great proponent of ichthammol ointment. It would cause a skin infection to 'come to a head'. Actually, I think he thought it to be the universal cure for everything short of severed limbs.

dale in Louisiana

[Changeling]

Ah, yes! Petro-Carbo. Brings back memories. the Watkins man was a monthly visit to many a home 'out in the country' when I was growing up. They sold medicinal remedies like Petro-Carbo as well as spices and such.

Petro-Carbo was just about a universal remedy for scrapes and cuts. Watkins liniment (I seem to remember it was light blue) was good for achy, sore muscles and joints.

Dad was also a great proponent of ichthammol ointment. It would cause a skin infection to 'come to a head'. Actually, I think he thought it to be the universal cure for everything short of severed limbs.

dale in Louisiana

Dale (or anyone) did any of you ever try any of these remedies (I'm serious).
I am really interested in what you remember about ( Petro-Carbo) being applied to wounds. Scratches and such are one thing but wounds are another and serious thing, I really need the information.

I looked up ichthammol ointment, it says it was for horse's skin. That really doesn't make any difference since lots of early ointments/salve/medicines were comonly given to both.
When I was a kid I stuck a splinter through my hand while clearing uinderbrush. There was some black people working with me including a woman who was cooking the lunch.
One of the guys rushed me over to her, she put this thick salve all around the base of the splinter where it entered my hand and told the guy to cut off the splinter where it came out of my hand, witch was only about 3/4 inch. In a little while my hand started itching.
Took the loose bandage off (no pain at all) and we all sat there and watched the splinter back out of my hand till the woman took her fingers and pulled it totally out. She put more salve on/in the wound and wrapped it up.

To make a long story short the hand healed over in a matter of a few days. After a month there was not even a scar on my hand!

[waksupi]

My recipe works. When I was a teenager, an old neighbor told me of grand dad saving his life, or at least his leg with it. A blade had broke loose in a saw mill, and had cut him to the bone on his upper leg. He dropped his bibs and showed me the scar, over a foot long, and real nasty looking. He said after four or five days, gangrene had set in, and the local doctor had no hopes of his survival. Grand dad heard about it, and took a jar of this salve over. He started applying the hot compresses, putting on fresh ones when the previous one cooled. Kept at it for 24 hours straight. Stopped the gangrene, and the leg healed.

[Dale in Louisiana]

Dale (or anyone) did any of you ever try any of these remedies (I'm serious).
I am really interested in what you remember about ( Petro-Carbo) being applied to wounds. Scratches and such are one thing but wounds are another and serious thing, I really need the information.

I looked up ichthammol ointment, it says it was for horse's skin. That really doesn't make any difference since lots of early ointments/salve/medicines were comonly given to both.
When I was a kid I stuck a splinter through my hand while clearing uinderbrush. There was some black people working with me including a woman who was cooking the lunch.
One of the guys rushed me over to her, she put this thick salve all around the base of the splinter where it entered my hand and told the guy to cut off the splinter where it came out of my hand, witch was only about 3/4 inch. In a little while my hand started itching.
Took the loose bandage off (no pain at all) and we all sat there and watched the splinter back out of my hand till the woman took her fingers and pulled it totally out. She put more salve on/in the wound and wrapped it up.

To make a long story short the hand healed over in a matter of a few days. After a month there was not even a scar on my hand!

Ichthammol was commonly called 'black salve' and was a 'drawing salve', so named because when applied to a boil or a splinter, it would draw the infection to a head. For a splinter, that meant it was easily removed. I question what effect the salve actually had, because before the store-bought salve was commonly available, the country remedy for a 'rising' or a splinter was to bandage a bit of the fatty part of bacon (Mmmmm! Bacon!) over the infected area for a few days. The infection would form a head.

Coupled to the application of black salve, the old folks heartily applied a second remedy, hot soaks with salt water, preferably Epsom salt, but plain old table salt would do as well.

Now, for my thoughts: If you take the time to clean and bandage a wound daily, and you also make sure that it's soaked in hot salty water, you're probably doing as much good as any additional medicine. The oily components of either salve of bacon serve to keep the wound free of external infection agents and keep the surrounding skin soft, allowing the body's natural infection-fighting mechanisms to work.

dale in Louisiana

[Changeling]

Thanks to all for the replies and information.

[L Ross]

I don't think there is any carbolic acid in Watkins Petro-Carbo salve anymore. I rationed out the last dab of the old can. When I saw Watkins was selling it I got a new can. It is not the same stuff. I think I'll give Waksupi's recipe a try.
I'd read about a plantain based salve. (The weed plantain not the banana type) We picked plantain and dried it at a rendezvous. Crushed the dried leaves and removed the stringy fiber. Then powdered in a mortar and pestle. Mixed the powder with finely rendered sheep tallow and lard. (We were making patch lube with the fats anyway.) A day after we finished it fellow reenactor kicked over a coffee pot with his bare foot and suffered a very bad burn, treated at the local E.R. he was not getting better. The people were from Kentucky and a lady friend of his was visiting our camp wishing she had some plantain salve for a burn ointment. My wife and I were about struck dumb. We produced our salve and the lady examined it and pronounced it the real deal. We gifted them the can and in a day or two the fellow was walking normally and healing nicely.

Duke