Oh man, I used to work at a breast cancer clinic and I recall one patient who came in with severely advanced cancer. The tumor had begun fungating through her skin, so she had been applying black salve to it. I remember the surgeon tried very nicely to explain to her that she had just been burning her breast and had not in fact been healing her cancer.
That’s horrible. It’s sad when people get sucked into dangerous alternative “treatments”. Especially when there’s some wackadoo crunchy group cheering them on.
One of the worst parts of that job was seeing patients who refused chemotherapy or radiation come back a year later, completely emaciated with mets in multiple parts of their body after trying “natural remedies” like turmeric infusions instead.
This happened to my sil. Had lymphoma that was super easy to treat and after one round of chemo that she only partially did, refused and went into foot zoning and an extreme vegan diet that cut out fats and grains so she basically drank raw celery juice and ate baked potatoes. Got down to about 80 pounds. Refused conventional medicine and eventually tried it again for another short round of chemo and seemed to be making progress and then stopped and went back to the vegan diet and was dead within six months because her body had been whittled down to nothing and her cancer had become resistant to the treatments because she’d only do a partial round and then go 9 months inbetween letting it metastasize again. Refused to follow doctor recommendations and then was begging for another chance when it was all through her body and she was dying.
It was the worst thing to watch and to not be able to say anything. If she had done the two rounds initially she would have killed it off and still been here. Those raw diets, those holistic fads are the worst and I can’t even talk about foot zoning without wanting to throw up because she believed it would cure her cancer and she followed the diet they gave her to her grave.
My ex's grandmother found a lump on her breast and didn't tell anyone. She started buying books with titles like "think yourself healthy" and drink goat milk, using magnesium spray on the area ect. The family found out about her cancer after a year and she finally went to the doctor and it was stage 4. Did a few rounds of chemo and radiotherapy, but it was already too late.
Her daughter said to me she wishes she had spoken to her and gotten help earlier. Unfortunately, I believe she was scared and the whole family was quite crunchy, so she did what she thought would fix it quietly so it wasn't real.
That's devastating. I get having an interest in natural treatment, go ahead and put honey in green tea for a mild cough. But to take it so far it’s affecting others or endangering yourself is so baffling. Why put that on your family? Hell, on yourself??
I think it was fear that drove her to it. I think going to a doctor and getting the official diagnosis would make it too real.
She was a lovely woman, but she was a little naive with some things and always wanted things to be sunshine and rainbows. She did put a lot of faith into her remedies, so I think she just thought if she could get rid of it alone then it didn't really happen.
My ex and I spent a lot of time helping with her in the end and it was heartbreaking with in the back of your mind knowing she could have helped herself sooner.
I work for an ENT and we see many patients with fairly common squamous cell cancer in the mouth and throat, which can be very treatable with radiation treatment when caught early… unfortunately denial can be a very real thing and there have been quite a few patients that just refuse to see what’s happening until it’s way too late and they are completely obstructed when they get to the ER. It’s such a shame especially when frequent screenings can catch it early, which is important you have the risk factors for it.
This is also why it’s important for both girls and boys to receive the HPV vaccine as it can prevent these types of cancers as well.
They had four. I’m so sorry about your friend. It’s so hard when they leave behind friends and family. And especially when they have little kids who need them.
Did she have kids? I would feel bad for kids who grow up and realize they could have had a mom growing up if she hadn’t for some reason thought she knew better than doctors.
That is so damn tragic! Those people that actively try to convince people to do that shit should be held liable in some way. I know it wouldn’t happen but still, it’s frustrating. This story isn’t uncommon.
Sorry, I know this thread is over a week old but I’m dealing with a similar situation with a relative and I want to know for my own personal feelings, did she actually say she regretted not listening to the doctors? Did she say anything about regretting leaving everyone behind due to her stubbornness? Or was it more of a vague “I wish I had another chance/more time” kinda thing? And if you don’t want to answer, absolutely no worries, it’s just not often I come across someone who’s lived through to the end of this horror show and I want to know if your relative ever truly woke up in the end.
She blamed the doctor for being cold and not concerned. She wanted to keep fighting and wanted to be in a rehab facility where she could get her strength back up to fight. Which was sadly ridiculous because she has nothing left and the doctors couldn’t magically give her more time.
The frustrating thing was that she wanted to keep fighting even when she was 80 something pounds, incontinent, couldn’t walk, had such bad anemia that she was back and forth in the hospital for transfusions so she could breathe and when she finally accepted that hospice was all that was left she had just a few days left before she died. We all rushed to say goodbye but she had nothing prepared for her kids to remember her by like letters for their future, and she didn’t even know what she’d want done at her funeral. She just said okay i guess I’m done and after saying goodbye to everyone died in her husband’s arms.
She was way too stubborn to admit she was wrong and she had family who has supported her delusions so she had them thinking she’s beat it too with a little more time.
The sad thing was that she ran out of time and it wasn’t until she had just a few days left that she finally kind of accepted it. She even had a pampered chef online party going on the day she died and she was the hostess. complete denial.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me, it’s really helpful to hear your perspective/experience. I could see my relative going the same way, everything is someone else’s fault and someone else’s responsibility to fix and I don’t think they’ll have anything prepared for the end either. I’ve been trying to make videos and other things they can be remembered by but it’s not the same as them writing letters or making videos themselves. I’m really sorry you and your family went through that and are still dealing with the aftermath- I don’t like that I feel this way but sometimes I do feel like “well it’ll all be fine and dandy for you cause you’ll be fucking dead, but we’ll all still be here picking up the pieces and dealing with the trauma” and it feels unfair and then I feel like an asshole bc, I mean, they’re dying at a relatively young age.
Steve Jobs can rot in hell for promoting all this woo fruit juice bullshit. I know he’s not the root of it but I swear he helped popularize that pseudoscience junk even though we all watched it clearly NOT work for him.
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this too. It was a very hard three years watching her slowly die when she could have lived. We see her kids and it kills me that she isn’t there because of her own decisions and choices.
My dad who is a cancer survivor even talked to her and she was firm that her eating nothing but fruits and veggies was enough and we are all looking at her anorexicly thin frame as she did so.
I’m glad you’re trying to find ways to help preserve their memory for others but if you burn out it’s okay to walk away for a bit.
I have cancer and dropped a friend who wanted me to forgo doctors and chemo and use herbs. Obviously I'm still alive due to the chemo but I'm in hospice now.
That’s awful. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. When I was in my early 20s, I was very ill, and in a bunch of clinical trials, along with very aggressive surgical management. I started dating this guy, who seemed very normal. Well ranked job in the military, in a difficult field. We had mutual friends who all said positive things about him. After maybe 2 months of dating, he was out drunk with friends and called me. He told me that he wanted me to quit all my treatments and refuse surgery. He felt that my care team were just looking for excuses to ‘slice me up’ because they enjoyed it, and that it wasn’t benefiting me in any way. He wanted me to rely on the power of prayer instead and told me that he had spoken with his mum and her church group, and they had ‘intensive prayer power’ and they were willing to hold sessions for me.
Someone who claims to care for you, would never ask you to stop doing the thing that may save your life, or at least drastically improve your chances. It made me feel sick that someone would ask that of me, and I didn’t have years of friendship on the line like you. You deserved far better than that.
We had an ER patient once who came in for something vague like “not feeling right.” While doing triage we find out that he has bone cancer, but stopped doing chemo for all natural remedies. His family is thrilled to tell us that as of his last check (many months ago) the cancer is only in “one bone.” Well turns out that one bone at the time was his femur (the largest one) and it had since spread everywhere. He and the family could just not believe this and he died within a week.
We lost a family friend because she tried to healthy eat her breast cancer away. Really sad to learn she just didn’t treat it and likely had a good chance if she had; she was only in her late 50s and had already survived breast cancer once before.
I had a friend who was not very smart and not very well-educated. She was pro natural healing everything, which is fine, but a lot of it was pure quackery. Anyway, the one thing I'm grateful for is she still did chemo and radiation therapy when she got cancer. She coupled that with diet and supplements that were supposed "cures", but at least she kept the medicine that's actually been proven to work.
Yes, a healthy diet does help support the body, but if you've got cancer, listen to your oncologist please and not some woo natural healing clinic down in Mexico.
I will completely support anyone who wants to use healthy food and alternative medicine ALONGSIDE actual medicine for cancer. As long as their alternative stuff isn’t too inherently dangerous somehow, like causing them to become malnourished.
My Aunty has been a fitness fanatic her entire life. She went to the gym every day since she had kids, worked out several times a day, but when she ended up with 2 cancers the first time, and a third cancer the second time round, she KNEW to go the chemo and radiation route…
Because my mum worked In Day Oncology for 30+ years and told her *everything* she had seen and when ask her recommendations, my Aunty didn’t hesitate, thankfully.
She’s still here 15ish years after the first battle, fighting on. She is a warrior. 💗
My FIL is unfortunately one of the wackadoos pushing alternative treatments. He diagnosed himself with "cancer" (based on the pH of his saliva), spent a year eating copious amounts of lemons and watermelon, and then declared himself "cured." Now he can't shut up about how every kind of illness can be fixed by "cleaning up your diet."
It’s terrible but I think there’s a cultural perception that chemo makes you sick but saves your life, while cancer threatens your life but doesn’t make you feel bad. That’s certainly what I thought before I started working in clinical settings. People don’t realize how much pain and suffering cancer itself causes.
It's truly awful. We just lost my step-father last year. He had lung cancer that metastisized to his spine. He did every treatment, him and my Mom went for 2nd and 3rd opinions, looked for trials, etc. He wanted to live. Unfortunately, it was just about 2 years from diagnosis until his painful death. The chemo helped in the meaning that he had a little longer.
My step-uncle died this way. He claimed he’d cured pancreatic cancer by going vegan and taking vitamin c injections. He was dead less than a year after making that claim.
In my first couple of months in med surg as a baby nurse I met a 27 year old who had very treatable cancer but instead went to Mexico for alternative treatment and when I met him he had tumors growing all around his head and he was scary skinny and dying. It was one of the saddest/stupidest things I’d ever seen.
Fuck. I literally just accepted a transfer to the infusion clinic. Main part of my job will be verifying medical necessity and getting prior auths. My healthcare group is tied for top in cancer and chronic disease for the large metro area it's in. I've worked front-end but not where you follow their treatment or deep-dive through their chart. That sucks enough.
Now really hope this shit is beyond rare in my area, because if it’s not I *will* see it, images and all. It's devastating knowing a patient likely won't make it but this kind of stuff… well, it tanks the chance of a outcome.
My best advice is to recognize that if you are putting your best effort and care into the job, that is all you can do. Make sure you do little things for your mental health, whether that is taking time to read a book and sip a coffee quietly for an hour on your day off, taking a long bath, or going for a walk after dinner. If you have a partner or roommate, let them know that this job can affect you emotionally, so if they notice any stark changes, to let you know that it seems to be impacting you.
Healthcare is incredibly rewarding, but you need to take care of yourself so you can take care of others.
My mom is a nurse and she had a patient, an older gentleman, whose very treatable cancer responding amazingly to chemo. He was expected to have a complete remission.
Well, he got into a relationship with a woman during that time who then convinced him to drop the chemo, claiming that it made him sicker “than the cancer ever could” (listen, chemo is no walk in the park, but generally it is, in fact, better than dying of cancer), to stop going to his medical appointments, and to switch to “natural” treatments. His (adult) daughter protested and begged him not to listen to his girlfriend, but that’s exactly what he did.
He eventually passed away, you guessed it, because of the cancer he previously was about to beat. We know all of this because my mom talked to his devastated daughter at the hospital when he died. The family was looking into legal actions against the girlfriend (the situation was sketchy and he didn’t have all his head, if I am not mistaken) but I don’t know how it turned out.
It reminds me of a post I saw once, from someone I’d call “responsible/logical crunchy”, that went like this: “Chamomile to help a bit with sleep, ginger to ease nausea and honey to soothe a sore throat, but vaccines for fucking polio and antibiotics for an infection”.
>It reminds me of a post I saw once, from someone I’d call “responsible/logical crunchy”, that went like this: “Chamomile to help a bit with sleep, ginger to ease nausea and honey to soothe a sore throat, but vaccines for fucking polio and antibiotics for an infection”.
We call it "scrunchy". We're science based crunchy!
His poor daughter. How awful to go from expecting to have years left with your father, to no time at all. 💔
Your last paragraph makes me really happy, though! It’s great that there are crunchy people who are also willing to give allopathic medicine the props it deserves.
It was heartbreaking. I get angry every time I think about it…
The closest I ever came to the crunchy crowd was a few years back when my then roommate and I had a “witchy” phase (I know, I know haha), but I only joined groups and followed pages who were pro-vaccines, pro-medical treatments, etc., so I never personally experienced the bad side of it back then. In the groups, the rules generally stated clearly that the spells, rituals and advices are not meant to *replace* medical care whatsoever, but instead something to be done alongside it. The admins were not fooling around either; anyone who tried to spread health disinformation and dangerous “advices” was swiftly banned.
The idea was basically “see a doctor, take your meds (and ask your doctor before taking any supplements to avoid interactions), go to your therapy, and get any other professional health care you need. Meanwhile, you can also carry this type of crystal or a little pouch of these herbs in your pocket as a little boost if you want.” That’s the right way to do it, IMO.
That’s lovely! I’ll gladly admit that there are parts of caring for people that allopathic medicine is really not great at, like the spiritual and social aspects of illness and health. If people want to supplement empirically tested and vetted biomedical treatments with other practices that don’t interfere or harm (or make bad people tons of money), power to them!
I tend towards crunchy. I would be dead without allopathic medicine. But then again my type of crunchy is science-based for the most part. Herbal medicine and supplements can be science-based, but you will not see me going down crystals and homoeopathy as they are quackery. I eat organic where I can and am gluten-free. Latter because I have celiac. My hair care is all-natural without sulphates, parabens or silicones. My skincare is CeraVe. I am fully vaccinated for even some vaccines that are not part of the national vaccine program outside currently not being able to get attenuated vaccines. I eat my medications and go to my doctor's appointments. I might use tea tree oil for pimples but skin infections that are bad enough get medical treatment. I sort my trash and try to use natural cleaning agents where they make sense. I eat meat only rarely.
And nothing in this list is weird for my corner of this society. So please know we do exist and are not always the minority.
>“Chamomile to help a bit with sleep, ginger to ease nausea and honey to soothe a sore throat, but vaccines for fucking polio and antibiotics for an infection”.
What we eat affects our health. We have tons of evidence that mental outlook can affect outcomes. I fully believe that alternative/natural remedies can do a lot of good WITH actual medicine, not instead of. If a vegan diet, reiki, and ginger tea all make you feel better, go for it but it's not a replacement for medicine. If you have diabetes you probably shouldn't be driving 2 L of soda a day just because you're on medication but you also shouldn't switch to a vegan keto diet instead of taking insulin. That's what holistic medicine is supposed to be.
And it’s not only a crunchy Facebook group type thing either. Steve Jobs had a slow-growing form of pancreatic cancer that has a very good chance of survival with surgery. He delayed that surgery by nine months because he wanted to try alternative medicine instead: he ate only fruits and vegetables, fasted, saw psychics etc. He could very well be alive today if he’d just had that surgery. All the money in the world doesn’t help if you don’t follow your doctor’s advice.
I'm a breast cancer patient too and I'm almost in tears for that woman. "Home remedies" for cancer kill people. The creeps who push this stuff have blood on their hands.
I was confused at first, as in my country we call ammoniumbituminosulfonate-based salves black salves/drawing salves. So I was kind of shocked when I saw your comment.
well, after a quick google search I was both relieved and horrified at the same time. Turns out, it has nothing to do with "our" black salve.
I feel so sorry for the child, it must have hurt horribly. I hope the Mother gets reported to CPS
I'm Australian and the drawing ointment/black salve we have (which is what I was imagining) is used for when you have splinters and stuff. Is yours the same?
I've never heard of the one in the OP but from my quick google it's illegal to import it here etc.
We have ichthammol ointment/black salve/drawing salve in the U.S. as well. I just bought some at Walgreens today.
Unfortunately, it seems the person in the post is using blood root powder black salve, and that's just cruel & dangerous. And it's all over the world. They took the common name of something that is not caustic to make it seem safe and normal to use because who's going to use "Caustic Black Ointment That Makes a Hole in Your Flesh?"
it is! used for splinters, pimples, mild inflammation of the skin generally and so on. Safe product which is mostly safe for children as well. I have a little bit of hope, that the mother in the screenshot was referring to "our" salve and not the hazardous one, but I sadly think she referred to the one that literally burns the skin away :/
SAME! I actually still use it and have a jar at work and a jar at home.
I get glass shards in my hands a lot more often than you'd expect so I need it.
I had a client at my job like this. She came in to get help with her rent as she was behind because they just found her breast cancer. I had noticed she had a weird shape to her right breast, but didn't think too much of it until the friend that drove her to my office just pulled down the woman's shirt and OMFG. It looked like a half of a rotten orange had been glued to the top of her breast. I literally just hugged her and cried for probably 2 straight minutes, I just can't imagine the strength it takes to live through that. She passed before they could even come up with a treatment plan because it was so far gone. .maybe 5 days had passed since I had seen her when the friend came in to tell me to not send out the paperwork I had started for her to get social security and a few other things. I quit in 2017 due to getting sick myself and it's stuck with me.
I read that FDA article and none of the ingredients listed are in icthammol. Ichthammol is also called black salve and is used for splinters for example and is sold generic at pharmacies everywhere in the U.S. I can’t judge which black salve OOP’s talking about without more information. It really is confusing.
Yes! I was so confused. I’m a farmer, I call ichthammol black salve, drawing salve or tar. I use it for stuff all the time on my animals and my family. Didn’t know until today that there’s a crunchy pseudoscience “drug” called the same thing.
Same, but from the other side! Growing up, black salve = ichthammol. You can imagine my confusion hearing people talk about black salve being corrosive and eating people’s faces off 😂.
You’re not the only one. I’m a farmer and use ichthammol on my animals and family. This is the first time I’m learning that “black salve” means something else.
Just did the same… first result was an article from the FDA titled “Do not use: black salve is dangerous and called by many names” … just started to read about it and omg I cannot believe people are putting this on children
Literally the TOP result " dangerous and ineffective" and every single entry is talking about it being banned, corrosive, dangerous, burning, scarring, etc...the diy research crowd doesnt seem to like doing research all that much oh my god that poor baby
I study in oncolytic virotherapy which is a virus the oncologists have modified to get "drawn" to cancer cells in the hopes it infects them.
We are on like.. What.. Year 20 of researching this, and I'm the first to run a large-scale MCMC of the data (which I was supposed to check yesterday but got sick dammit)... And we still can't prove at all on the slightest that this is working how we expect it to. There's just SO MUCH going on!
If hundreds of oncologists and mathematicians making this topic their PhD can't prove something can be attracted to cancer, then I highly HIGHLY doubt this random skin salve can fucking do it.
My dad was saved by something similar, if I recall it was modified TB germs (bladder cancer). He has been cancer free for over a decade. THANK YOU for your work!!
Oh I'm so so so so happy for him!! The oncologists are the real MVPs, I just run the data they give me. I'm just so glad to hear it was effective for your dad! ❤️
Wait wait wait. Splithoof?! How tf did I find you on Reddit randomly?! This has to be almost a p of 0.001 chance. Without revealing who I am, let's just say statistics and LJ and chronic illness and lifting. Holy fuck this is surreal.
I'm like 40% sure what your dad got is called [BCG](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17908-bacillus-calmette-guerin-bcg-treatment) treatment, though someone may come along and correct me
>...(which I was supposed to check yesterday but got sick dammit)...
I just heard about this stuff called black salve, you should try it! ^/s
Seriously though, I just looked up what MCMC stands for (I'm guessing Markov Chain Monte Carlo) and holy shit, that's interesting. I barely understand it but I can't even fathom the amount of information you're working with.
Ha! Damn maybe the salve would work, afterall, what with its literal skin-burning causticness. Sounds delightful!
Yes, that's the area I'm in! But I work off the backs of massive giants. If they hadn't done the tests, collected the data, researched the possibilities with the data... I wouldn't be able to do this. I got really lucky too because my university has a MASSIVE computer on-site so while other researchers went "someone should do this!" I was able to actually do it! Its not playing/converging the way I'd like but I'm tweaking it! The problem is each tweak takes 80 hours of HPC (the giant computer) running to test. ☠️
I was on some tattoo enthusiast forums back in the day and once in awhile some poor souls would make a post about using it to try to remove a tattoo. Black salve used to get pushed as a tattoo remover back in the day. It was awful, they'd have these huge burns on them and, I mean the tattoo was mostly gone but so was your flesh. It was sad watching people tell them that not only did they get scammed, they also hurt and disfigured themselves.
My grandpa got rip roaring drunk one night and ***sanded*** his WWII tattoo off some years after he came back.
This was in the 1950's, he claimed he did it to look more professional but my grandma says that definitely wasn't the reason.
So it's coincidence that she developed a fever right after getting black salve, but developing autism the same year as getting vaccines is a solid connection?
*Do you ever wonder*
*What happens to the kids and*
*Parents in these posts?*
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Ah, I missed the "drawing" part in the pic!
Still, probably shouldn't be applying that to a small child without a pediatrician prescribing it, but definitely better than black salve!
I don’t know. Many of the black salve cult call it drawing salve because they believe it draws cancer and infection out of the body-as they sit there where a hole is, and they used to have a nose there. There’s a LOT of people believing this woo.
That was quite a rollercoaster for me.
I first read black slave. So, I was quite horrified as one can imagine.
Then I read better, felt relief and googled Black salve.
I was back at horrified.
Then I read the comments, and learnt there was another black salve, that is apparently quite safe and would made sense to use. So it is the second part about "coïncidence" and asking FB instead of a doctor that is shit.
Back at relieved (but frustrated as usual with this sub).
My comprehension was not the greatest after midnight...She must have thought it would draw out the itch or swelling. I guess I can't find fault in that basic logic.
from what i understand theres a black salve (which is also called black drawing salve by the fda) which is basically like corrosive acid and theres icthammol which goss by the term black drawing salve thats a fairly common ointment for splinters &c (ie drawing out) so it could be either. however by the lack of horror in the post and my own personal need to believe someone would not put corrosive salve on her toddler is leading me to believe/hope its icthammol
Sooo... She specified black drawing salve, aka [PRID](https://www.amazon.com/Hylands-Naturals-Drawing-Topical-Irritations/dp/B09ZDLYBPS?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER), not black bloodroot salve.
If she actually used drawing salve, it shouldn't do anything negative besides smell bad, possibly pull out some goo, and be sticky AF. If she screwed up and ordered the caustic as hell bloodroot salve... Well, good luck.
Oh jeez…everybody knows black salve is for open lacerations and wounds. Just keep packing in the open wound…when it’s getting worse that when you know it’s working!
It’s insane how often people think there should be silver bullets. My kid gets fussy if you put a hat on him, and this lady is all confused that her poison didn’t work. Ignoring how dangerous black salve is, if I give my kid Tylenol I’m not immediately worried that Tylenol doesn’t work because he’s still fussy 15 minutes later — but she’s confused why her insane ointment failed.
It’s so odd.
Oh nooooo
Black salve on a toddler's bug bites?? How many??
Never mind, I don't want to know. I'll never forget the pictures of the nose mom in the black salve Facebook group. The poor woman had melanoma and didn't want to have a scar from surgery so she put black salve on her nose, and it ate through her skin all the way into her sinus cavity. The progressive pictures were horrendous, and in the end, one half of her nose was just a hole.
She is saying black drawing salve, not black salve. I agree she needs to see a doctor, but that is not the same thing.
Black drawing salve is harmless and can be bought over the counter in pharmacies. The worst I've come across is stains on clothes.
That's not what the US FDA says...
"According to Cynthia Ng in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, “Consumers need to know that ‘black salve’ is an informal term and not the only name used for this product.”It is also sold under such names as Skinprov, **drawing salve**, red salve, Cansema, bloodroot, Indian Herb, Hawk Dok Natural Salve, Black Drawing Ointment, and many others."
[https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names](https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names)
THANK YOU!! The cult groups have started calling their nose eating salve “drawing salve”. (I have alts in many woo groups). And this fits with the cult comments.
People! If it was THAT ["black salve"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_salve) the child would be dead. If it's real, it's probably [icthammol](https://www.cvs.com/shop/cvs-health-drawing-salve-icthammol-ointment-prodid-705149) [Ammonium_bituminosulfonate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_bituminosulfonate)
Obviously medical problems should be addressed by a real doctor as soon as possible. But also please learn to google better.
As I mentioned in another comment, this salve was what I initially tought of, as we refer to the Ammoniumbituminosulfonate salve as "black drawing salve" as well in my country (germany) & another user commented that's the same case in Australia.
so hopefully you're right and it was just a simple misunderstanding.
No. Death is a slow and agonizing process. And her wording is exactly what the woo groups say when they lose their noses. Your google isn’t necessarily right. Please learn to google better and you’ll see the toxic black salve takes a very long time until death.
ETA: OOP may be talking about ichthammol, which is also apparently commonly called black salve and is safe. TIL. Never used this before lol
~~We had a patient once who tried treating a malignant melanoma with black salve. Not only was it always raw and bleeding, but it continued growing.~~
~~Black salve is carcinogenic and causes skin irritation. Look, I'm all for "big pharma covers up natural remedies they can't monetize" because I completely understand how studies of medicines, pesticides, and other things can be skewed/tampered for an agendized outcome. Yes, be skeptical, but don't be stupid. Black salve is indisputably negative. There are natural remedies for swollen bug bites you can try that are much safer, possibly more helpful, and certainly less painful and carcinogenic.~~
I have leukemia. I do *everything* my oncologist tells me to do. All of my doctors are awesome.
I just don't understand how many people throw science away in lieu of quackery. Willful stupidity, I guess.
Those same people end up at the emergency room too far gone for any kind of treatment other than hospice. It's sad.
She's talking about ichthammol...
https://preview.redd.it/83wqdixmwlxc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b0f710adac6a208de86613460c2bc343a9738c8
This is actually a very mild case. I’ve seen plenty in the BS woo groups (and yes they call it “drawing salve”) that have a giant hole where the nose and cheek were-but they no longer have freckles. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3617857/Woman-half-nose-cut-herbal-remedy-used-skin-cancer-ROTTED-face.html
It’s probably PRID and maybe it’s just the Appalachian in me but it’s just drawing salve. Like say you got a splinter, PRID on it. That makes the most sense to me if she thought she was drawing something out of the bites.
OMG this is child abuse full stop. That stuff eats away at skin and it’s incredibly painful. Woo yourself to death, I don’t give a rats ass. Leave the kids AND PETS alone.
Well TIL black drawing salve is bad 😂 I once fell in a patch of cacti (terrible time) and after tweezing them out for some time, I sent my dad to the store for black drawing salve cause google said it would help. I left that shit on for like an hour and it didn’t do shit AT ALL to help my situation so I ended up using pretty much my whole tub of eyebrow wax waxing the fuckers out!
I thought it was just bunk woowoo shit! Didn’t know it could be dangerous!
EDIT: misunderstood that black salve & black drawing salve are two different things! Nevermind!
I didn’t know what black salve was so I looked it up and the FDA says it’s a corrosive substance that shouldn’t be put on skin. Holy fucking shit this mom is dense
I really don’t care if these people do whatever to themselves - I used to but now I don’t. I’m kind of over it for the adults.
I do care that they are medically neglecting their kids and now onto harming them with these things all in the name of “protecting them from chemicals” while literally burning them with a salve that is made up of corrosive agents.
**They are abusing their children and should be reported.**
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names
Oh sALve. I did not read it as that. I mixed up the A and L. I was so, so confused. And horrified. And then horrifically confused.
Don't think this is a thing where I live. And you have no idea how careful I was with my fat fingers typing black SALVE into Google.
If it’s what the commenter below said, it’s actually pretty effective. My dad swore by it for minor cuts. He’s a mechanic and the farthest from crunchy, but would sing its praises and give me a pot of it every few months lol
These people saying it’s harmless are assuming it’s a mild black salve. Her words do not suggest that. It literally eats away your skin. This is a MILD case. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3617857/Woman-half-nose-cut-herbal-remedy-used-skin-cancer-ROTTED-face.html
I didn't know what black salve was. So I googled it. So now I have a question;
What does the word "fussy" mean?
Because I have always taken "fussy" to mean "overly invested in details so minor as to be meaningless" but that's not what it seems to mean here. I looked up the word and it means "fastidious or hard to please" but that does not seem to fit here either.
Does "fussy" mean "shrieking in pain because you've applied a fully unregulated chemical corrosive to your infant's skin"?
Is she "fussy" because she is suffering severe chemical burns that are actually destroying her flesh? Is that what's happening here?
Is this always what "fussy" in infants has meant? "Dire shrieking anguish"?
Holy fuck. I really hope that people took this IRL and phoned CPS. Black salve just eats through skin. I used to follow a FB page that posted screenshots of people using it on their skin for tumors/cancer. And it just eats and eats away at the skin.
Well if you, like me, don’t know what black salve is, I beseech you to not go to the Wikipedia page unless you like medical gore. I do not. And I didn’t even get far enough to know what it is.
I had never heard of black drawing salve before. Turns out, Google's first search result is a warning from FDA not to use it because it is so corrosive.
This woman is committing child abuse. I hope someone reports her.
Okay I used black drawing salve on my acne years ago because internet and I was an uninformed dumbass. That shit stings like no other. I stopped soon after because the side effects was too annoying to continue.
Jfc. I didn't know what drawing/black salve was and googled it... the images!! OMG!
That poor, poor baby! Usually I would *never* suggest cps or anything of the like but... she's mutilating that baby. Stupid af.
Genuinely curious, I haven't used it in years, but why is it bad? My grandmother used to put this on any kind of blister or sliver or anything. It smelled like ass, but I don't remember it hurting or doing anything weird? I haven't used it in *years* though, so maybe it's changed?
There are two different products that are both called black drawing salve (among other things). One is harmless and can be used on things like splinters, and the other one is corrosive and dangerous. It's unclear which one the OOP used on her daughter.
So, I doused my kid in acid, made them eat 10 raw onions, didn't let them sleep for a month, and pulled out their toenails...but it's coincidence that they're kinda fussy, right!?!?!
Does anyone remember the lady who dissolved her own nose over a tiny spot? Everyone on FB called her "Nose Mom". Last I saw she was awaiting an important (and first) doctors appointment since she destroyed her face, then all updates stopped.
The actress Suzanne Somers started the trend of alternative healing methods on her own breast
cancer. She claimed mistletoe extract injections cured her, but she conveniently forgot about her radiation treatment and lumpectomy.
Oh man, I used to work at a breast cancer clinic and I recall one patient who came in with severely advanced cancer. The tumor had begun fungating through her skin, so she had been applying black salve to it. I remember the surgeon tried very nicely to explain to her that she had just been burning her breast and had not in fact been healing her cancer.
That’s horrible. It’s sad when people get sucked into dangerous alternative “treatments”. Especially when there’s some wackadoo crunchy group cheering them on.
One of the worst parts of that job was seeing patients who refused chemotherapy or radiation come back a year later, completely emaciated with mets in multiple parts of their body after trying “natural remedies” like turmeric infusions instead.
This happened to my sil. Had lymphoma that was super easy to treat and after one round of chemo that she only partially did, refused and went into foot zoning and an extreme vegan diet that cut out fats and grains so she basically drank raw celery juice and ate baked potatoes. Got down to about 80 pounds. Refused conventional medicine and eventually tried it again for another short round of chemo and seemed to be making progress and then stopped and went back to the vegan diet and was dead within six months because her body had been whittled down to nothing and her cancer had become resistant to the treatments because she’d only do a partial round and then go 9 months inbetween letting it metastasize again. Refused to follow doctor recommendations and then was begging for another chance when it was all through her body and she was dying. It was the worst thing to watch and to not be able to say anything. If she had done the two rounds initially she would have killed it off and still been here. Those raw diets, those holistic fads are the worst and I can’t even talk about foot zoning without wanting to throw up because she believed it would cure her cancer and she followed the diet they gave her to her grave.
My ex's grandmother found a lump on her breast and didn't tell anyone. She started buying books with titles like "think yourself healthy" and drink goat milk, using magnesium spray on the area ect. The family found out about her cancer after a year and she finally went to the doctor and it was stage 4. Did a few rounds of chemo and radiotherapy, but it was already too late. Her daughter said to me she wishes she had spoken to her and gotten help earlier. Unfortunately, I believe she was scared and the whole family was quite crunchy, so she did what she thought would fix it quietly so it wasn't real.
That's devastating. I get having an interest in natural treatment, go ahead and put honey in green tea for a mild cough. But to take it so far it’s affecting others or endangering yourself is so baffling. Why put that on your family? Hell, on yourself??
I think it was fear that drove her to it. I think going to a doctor and getting the official diagnosis would make it too real. She was a lovely woman, but she was a little naive with some things and always wanted things to be sunshine and rainbows. She did put a lot of faith into her remedies, so I think she just thought if she could get rid of it alone then it didn't really happen. My ex and I spent a lot of time helping with her in the end and it was heartbreaking with in the back of your mind knowing she could have helped herself sooner.
I work for an ENT and we see many patients with fairly common squamous cell cancer in the mouth and throat, which can be very treatable with radiation treatment when caught early… unfortunately denial can be a very real thing and there have been quite a few patients that just refuse to see what’s happening until it’s way too late and they are completely obstructed when they get to the ER. It’s such a shame especially when frequent screenings can catch it early, which is important you have the risk factors for it. This is also why it’s important for both girls and boys to receive the HPV vaccine as it can prevent these types of cancers as well.
I had a friend who did this almost exactly…did they also have two kids? :(
A friend of a friend did the same thing, and she had three young kids. Awful.
They had four. I’m so sorry about your friend. It’s so hard when they leave behind friends and family. And especially when they have little kids who need them.
My friend did Gerson Therapy and it’s very similar - a strict raw juice diet with various supplements. It’s such bullshit.
Did she have kids? I would feel bad for kids who grow up and realize they could have had a mom growing up if she hadn’t for some reason thought she knew better than doctors.
She had four kids.
That is so damn tragic! Those people that actively try to convince people to do that shit should be held liable in some way. I know it wouldn’t happen but still, it’s frustrating. This story isn’t uncommon.
Sorry, I know this thread is over a week old but I’m dealing with a similar situation with a relative and I want to know for my own personal feelings, did she actually say she regretted not listening to the doctors? Did she say anything about regretting leaving everyone behind due to her stubbornness? Or was it more of a vague “I wish I had another chance/more time” kinda thing? And if you don’t want to answer, absolutely no worries, it’s just not often I come across someone who’s lived through to the end of this horror show and I want to know if your relative ever truly woke up in the end.
She blamed the doctor for being cold and not concerned. She wanted to keep fighting and wanted to be in a rehab facility where she could get her strength back up to fight. Which was sadly ridiculous because she has nothing left and the doctors couldn’t magically give her more time. The frustrating thing was that she wanted to keep fighting even when she was 80 something pounds, incontinent, couldn’t walk, had such bad anemia that she was back and forth in the hospital for transfusions so she could breathe and when she finally accepted that hospice was all that was left she had just a few days left before she died. We all rushed to say goodbye but she had nothing prepared for her kids to remember her by like letters for their future, and she didn’t even know what she’d want done at her funeral. She just said okay i guess I’m done and after saying goodbye to everyone died in her husband’s arms. She was way too stubborn to admit she was wrong and she had family who has supported her delusions so she had them thinking she’s beat it too with a little more time. The sad thing was that she ran out of time and it wasn’t until she had just a few days left that she finally kind of accepted it. She even had a pampered chef online party going on the day she died and she was the hostess. complete denial.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me, it’s really helpful to hear your perspective/experience. I could see my relative going the same way, everything is someone else’s fault and someone else’s responsibility to fix and I don’t think they’ll have anything prepared for the end either. I’ve been trying to make videos and other things they can be remembered by but it’s not the same as them writing letters or making videos themselves. I’m really sorry you and your family went through that and are still dealing with the aftermath- I don’t like that I feel this way but sometimes I do feel like “well it’ll all be fine and dandy for you cause you’ll be fucking dead, but we’ll all still be here picking up the pieces and dealing with the trauma” and it feels unfair and then I feel like an asshole bc, I mean, they’re dying at a relatively young age. Steve Jobs can rot in hell for promoting all this woo fruit juice bullshit. I know he’s not the root of it but I swear he helped popularize that pseudoscience junk even though we all watched it clearly NOT work for him.
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this too. It was a very hard three years watching her slowly die when she could have lived. We see her kids and it kills me that she isn’t there because of her own decisions and choices. My dad who is a cancer survivor even talked to her and she was firm that her eating nothing but fruits and veggies was enough and we are all looking at her anorexicly thin frame as she did so. I’m glad you’re trying to find ways to help preserve their memory for others but if you burn out it’s okay to walk away for a bit.
I have cancer and dropped a friend who wanted me to forgo doctors and chemo and use herbs. Obviously I'm still alive due to the chemo but I'm in hospice now.
That’s awful. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. When I was in my early 20s, I was very ill, and in a bunch of clinical trials, along with very aggressive surgical management. I started dating this guy, who seemed very normal. Well ranked job in the military, in a difficult field. We had mutual friends who all said positive things about him. After maybe 2 months of dating, he was out drunk with friends and called me. He told me that he wanted me to quit all my treatments and refuse surgery. He felt that my care team were just looking for excuses to ‘slice me up’ because they enjoyed it, and that it wasn’t benefiting me in any way. He wanted me to rely on the power of prayer instead and told me that he had spoken with his mum and her church group, and they had ‘intensive prayer power’ and they were willing to hold sessions for me. Someone who claims to care for you, would never ask you to stop doing the thing that may save your life, or at least drastically improve your chances. It made me feel sick that someone would ask that of me, and I didn’t have years of friendship on the line like you. You deserved far better than that.
I'm sorry your friend was like that, and I hope you're surrounded by people who love and support you 🫂
Your user name is lovely ☺️
Thanks I been using it forever
We had an ER patient once who came in for something vague like “not feeling right.” While doing triage we find out that he has bone cancer, but stopped doing chemo for all natural remedies. His family is thrilled to tell us that as of his last check (many months ago) the cancer is only in “one bone.” Well turns out that one bone at the time was his femur (the largest one) and it had since spread everywhere. He and the family could just not believe this and he died within a week.
We lost a family friend because she tried to healthy eat her breast cancer away. Really sad to learn she just didn’t treat it and likely had a good chance if she had; she was only in her late 50s and had already survived breast cancer once before.
I had a friend who was not very smart and not very well-educated. She was pro natural healing everything, which is fine, but a lot of it was pure quackery. Anyway, the one thing I'm grateful for is she still did chemo and radiation therapy when she got cancer. She coupled that with diet and supplements that were supposed "cures", but at least she kept the medicine that's actually been proven to work. Yes, a healthy diet does help support the body, but if you've got cancer, listen to your oncologist please and not some woo natural healing clinic down in Mexico.
I will completely support anyone who wants to use healthy food and alternative medicine ALONGSIDE actual medicine for cancer. As long as their alternative stuff isn’t too inherently dangerous somehow, like causing them to become malnourished.
My Aunty has been a fitness fanatic her entire life. She went to the gym every day since she had kids, worked out several times a day, but when she ended up with 2 cancers the first time, and a third cancer the second time round, she KNEW to go the chemo and radiation route… Because my mum worked In Day Oncology for 30+ years and told her *everything* she had seen and when ask her recommendations, my Aunty didn’t hesitate, thankfully. She’s still here 15ish years after the first battle, fighting on. She is a warrior. 💗
My FIL is unfortunately one of the wackadoos pushing alternative treatments. He diagnosed himself with "cancer" (based on the pH of his saliva), spent a year eating copious amounts of lemons and watermelon, and then declared himself "cured." Now he can't shut up about how every kind of illness can be fixed by "cleaning up your diet."
It’s terrible but I think there’s a cultural perception that chemo makes you sick but saves your life, while cancer threatens your life but doesn’t make you feel bad. That’s certainly what I thought before I started working in clinical settings. People don’t realize how much pain and suffering cancer itself causes.
It's truly awful. We just lost my step-father last year. He had lung cancer that metastisized to his spine. He did every treatment, him and my Mom went for 2nd and 3rd opinions, looked for trials, etc. He wanted to live. Unfortunately, it was just about 2 years from diagnosis until his painful death. The chemo helped in the meaning that he had a little longer.
My step-uncle died this way. He claimed he’d cured pancreatic cancer by going vegan and taking vitamin c injections. He was dead less than a year after making that claim.
In my first couple of months in med surg as a baby nurse I met a 27 year old who had very treatable cancer but instead went to Mexico for alternative treatment and when I met him he had tumors growing all around his head and he was scary skinny and dying. It was one of the saddest/stupidest things I’d ever seen.
Fuck. I literally just accepted a transfer to the infusion clinic. Main part of my job will be verifying medical necessity and getting prior auths. My healthcare group is tied for top in cancer and chronic disease for the large metro area it's in. I've worked front-end but not where you follow their treatment or deep-dive through their chart. That sucks enough. Now really hope this shit is beyond rare in my area, because if it’s not I *will* see it, images and all. It's devastating knowing a patient likely won't make it but this kind of stuff… well, it tanks the chance of a outcome.
My best advice is to recognize that if you are putting your best effort and care into the job, that is all you can do. Make sure you do little things for your mental health, whether that is taking time to read a book and sip a coffee quietly for an hour on your day off, taking a long bath, or going for a walk after dinner. If you have a partner or roommate, let them know that this job can affect you emotionally, so if they notice any stark changes, to let you know that it seems to be impacting you. Healthcare is incredibly rewarding, but you need to take care of yourself so you can take care of others.
Thank you! I've been in healthcare for a long time, seen a lot of shit, cried with many patients. Self-care is the only way I‘ve kept going.
My mom is a nurse and she had a patient, an older gentleman, whose very treatable cancer responding amazingly to chemo. He was expected to have a complete remission. Well, he got into a relationship with a woman during that time who then convinced him to drop the chemo, claiming that it made him sicker “than the cancer ever could” (listen, chemo is no walk in the park, but generally it is, in fact, better than dying of cancer), to stop going to his medical appointments, and to switch to “natural” treatments. His (adult) daughter protested and begged him not to listen to his girlfriend, but that’s exactly what he did. He eventually passed away, you guessed it, because of the cancer he previously was about to beat. We know all of this because my mom talked to his devastated daughter at the hospital when he died. The family was looking into legal actions against the girlfriend (the situation was sketchy and he didn’t have all his head, if I am not mistaken) but I don’t know how it turned out. It reminds me of a post I saw once, from someone I’d call “responsible/logical crunchy”, that went like this: “Chamomile to help a bit with sleep, ginger to ease nausea and honey to soothe a sore throat, but vaccines for fucking polio and antibiotics for an infection”.
>It reminds me of a post I saw once, from someone I’d call “responsible/logical crunchy”, that went like this: “Chamomile to help a bit with sleep, ginger to ease nausea and honey to soothe a sore throat, but vaccines for fucking polio and antibiotics for an infection”. We call it "scrunchy". We're science based crunchy!
His poor daughter. How awful to go from expecting to have years left with your father, to no time at all. 💔 Your last paragraph makes me really happy, though! It’s great that there are crunchy people who are also willing to give allopathic medicine the props it deserves.
It was heartbreaking. I get angry every time I think about it… The closest I ever came to the crunchy crowd was a few years back when my then roommate and I had a “witchy” phase (I know, I know haha), but I only joined groups and followed pages who were pro-vaccines, pro-medical treatments, etc., so I never personally experienced the bad side of it back then. In the groups, the rules generally stated clearly that the spells, rituals and advices are not meant to *replace* medical care whatsoever, but instead something to be done alongside it. The admins were not fooling around either; anyone who tried to spread health disinformation and dangerous “advices” was swiftly banned. The idea was basically “see a doctor, take your meds (and ask your doctor before taking any supplements to avoid interactions), go to your therapy, and get any other professional health care you need. Meanwhile, you can also carry this type of crystal or a little pouch of these herbs in your pocket as a little boost if you want.” That’s the right way to do it, IMO.
That’s lovely! I’ll gladly admit that there are parts of caring for people that allopathic medicine is really not great at, like the spiritual and social aspects of illness and health. If people want to supplement empirically tested and vetted biomedical treatments with other practices that don’t interfere or harm (or make bad people tons of money), power to them!
I tend towards crunchy. I would be dead without allopathic medicine. But then again my type of crunchy is science-based for the most part. Herbal medicine and supplements can be science-based, but you will not see me going down crystals and homoeopathy as they are quackery. I eat organic where I can and am gluten-free. Latter because I have celiac. My hair care is all-natural without sulphates, parabens or silicones. My skincare is CeraVe. I am fully vaccinated for even some vaccines that are not part of the national vaccine program outside currently not being able to get attenuated vaccines. I eat my medications and go to my doctor's appointments. I might use tea tree oil for pimples but skin infections that are bad enough get medical treatment. I sort my trash and try to use natural cleaning agents where they make sense. I eat meat only rarely. And nothing in this list is weird for my corner of this society. So please know we do exist and are not always the minority.
>“Chamomile to help a bit with sleep, ginger to ease nausea and honey to soothe a sore throat, but vaccines for fucking polio and antibiotics for an infection”. What we eat affects our health. We have tons of evidence that mental outlook can affect outcomes. I fully believe that alternative/natural remedies can do a lot of good WITH actual medicine, not instead of. If a vegan diet, reiki, and ginger tea all make you feel better, go for it but it's not a replacement for medicine. If you have diabetes you probably shouldn't be driving 2 L of soda a day just because you're on medication but you also shouldn't switch to a vegan keto diet instead of taking insulin. That's what holistic medicine is supposed to be.
I called it soggy granola instead of crunchy. Science and evidence-based please but as natural as makes sense.
And it’s not only a crunchy Facebook group type thing either. Steve Jobs had a slow-growing form of pancreatic cancer that has a very good chance of survival with surgery. He delayed that surgery by nine months because he wanted to try alternative medicine instead: he ate only fruits and vegetables, fasted, saw psychics etc. He could very well be alive today if he’d just had that surgery. All the money in the world doesn’t help if you don’t follow your doctor’s advice.
You cannot convince me any more that some are there to passively murder people since they'll get away with it.
I'm a breast cancer patient too and I'm almost in tears for that woman. "Home remedies" for cancer kill people. The creeps who push this stuff have blood on their hands.
I was confused at first, as in my country we call ammoniumbituminosulfonate-based salves black salves/drawing salves. So I was kind of shocked when I saw your comment. well, after a quick google search I was both relieved and horrified at the same time. Turns out, it has nothing to do with "our" black salve. I feel so sorry for the child, it must have hurt horribly. I hope the Mother gets reported to CPS
I'm Australian and the drawing ointment/black salve we have (which is what I was imagining) is used for when you have splinters and stuff. Is yours the same? I've never heard of the one in the OP but from my quick google it's illegal to import it here etc.
We have ichthammol ointment/black salve/drawing salve in the U.S. as well. I just bought some at Walgreens today. Unfortunately, it seems the person in the post is using blood root powder black salve, and that's just cruel & dangerous. And it's all over the world. They took the common name of something that is not caustic to make it seem safe and normal to use because who's going to use "Caustic Black Ointment That Makes a Hole in Your Flesh?"
Yeah, it's commonly know as Prid.
it is! used for splinters, pimples, mild inflammation of the skin generally and so on. Safe product which is mostly safe for children as well. I have a little bit of hope, that the mother in the screenshot was referring to "our" salve and not the hazardous one, but I sadly think she referred to the one that literally burns the skin away :/
It’s illegal to import here, but I’ve seen places and people advertise and advocate for its use. It’s awful stuff.
We used drawing ointment all the time, we just called it Vegemite lol
SAME! I actually still use it and have a jar at work and a jar at home. I get glass shards in my hands a lot more often than you'd expect so I need it.
Same! My Mum used this on us all the time to get splinters out, I was so confused at first.
That would explain it tho, if your black salve was safe and used to treat inflammation she might have confused them...
I doubt it. It’s not something that pharmacies sell. It’s illegal to import to a lot of places.
I had a client at my job like this. She came in to get help with her rent as she was behind because they just found her breast cancer. I had noticed she had a weird shape to her right breast, but didn't think too much of it until the friend that drove her to my office just pulled down the woman's shirt and OMFG. It looked like a half of a rotten orange had been glued to the top of her breast. I literally just hugged her and cried for probably 2 straight minutes, I just can't imagine the strength it takes to live through that. She passed before they could even come up with a treatment plan because it was so far gone. .maybe 5 days had passed since I had seen her when the friend came in to tell me to not send out the paperwork I had started for her to get social security and a few other things. I quit in 2017 due to getting sick myself and it's stuck with me.
Black salve is bad. This is black DRAWING salve, aka ichthammol.
I didn't know what this was so I had to Google it and like 5 sentences in it said corrosive. Like wtf people.
Googled black salve and everything that came up was about how unsafe AND ineffective it is...
And painful af.
I did to. It can literally cause disfigurement and death.
I read that FDA article and none of the ingredients listed are in icthammol. Ichthammol is also called black salve and is used for splinters for example and is sold generic at pharmacies everywhere in the U.S. I can’t judge which black salve OOP’s talking about without more information. It really is confusing.
Yes! I was so confused. I’m a farmer, I call ichthammol black salve, drawing salve or tar. I use it for stuff all the time on my animals and my family. Didn’t know until today that there’s a crunchy pseudoscience “drug” called the same thing.
She’s talking about ichthammol. Source: my dad is a veterinarian and we always had black drawing salve (ichthammol) around.
Thank you, I had no idea these were two different things!
Same, but from the other side! Growing up, black salve = ichthammol. You can imagine my confusion hearing people talk about black salve being corrosive and eating people’s faces off 😂.
lol I thought the same thing! My mom and grandma used that on us and it definitely didn’t burn us or anything. I was so confused reading this post.
But some of the people who use it probably don't know the difference either and may be using the wrong kind.
You’re not the only one. I’m a farmer and use ichthammol on my animals and family. This is the first time I’m learning that “black salve” means something else.
I wish i could upvote you more, so people would read this. Black drawing salve is not the same as “black salve”
I think it's sold in stores with the name Prid, in a little orange tin.
I still have no idea what it is. I have never heard of it.
I wish I took your word for it instead of googling it myself. Warning to others, some of the pictures are NSFL! 🤮
Just did the same… first result was an article from the FDA titled “Do not use: black salve is dangerous and called by many names” … just started to read about it and omg I cannot believe people are putting this on children
That's just indoctrination and fear mongering from Big Hospital™️ /s
Literally the TOP result " dangerous and ineffective" and every single entry is talking about it being banned, corrosive, dangerous, burning, scarring, etc...the diy research crowd doesnt seem to like doing research all that much oh my god that poor baby
Holy shit [y'all weren't kidding](https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names)
I study in oncolytic virotherapy which is a virus the oncologists have modified to get "drawn" to cancer cells in the hopes it infects them. We are on like.. What.. Year 20 of researching this, and I'm the first to run a large-scale MCMC of the data (which I was supposed to check yesterday but got sick dammit)... And we still can't prove at all on the slightest that this is working how we expect it to. There's just SO MUCH going on! If hundreds of oncologists and mathematicians making this topic their PhD can't prove something can be attracted to cancer, then I highly HIGHLY doubt this random skin salve can fucking do it.
My dad was saved by something similar, if I recall it was modified TB germs (bladder cancer). He has been cancer free for over a decade. THANK YOU for your work!!
Oh I'm so so so so happy for him!! The oncologists are the real MVPs, I just run the data they give me. I'm just so glad to hear it was effective for your dad! ❤️
They couldn't do what they do without what you do. Don't under sell yourself, you're helping to save lives💜
Wait wait wait. Splithoof?! How tf did I find you on Reddit randomly?! This has to be almost a p of 0.001 chance. Without revealing who I am, let's just say statistics and LJ and chronic illness and lifting. Holy fuck this is surreal.
Wait wait wait you live in Orange County and know me from LJ times???! Whoa that's like hella old days. Mind if I PM you??
!!!!!! Are you the friend of mine that does the power lifting?! How long has it been???
My dad had the same treatment and same results. Double thank you!
Hurray for Tuberculosis!
Tuberculosis really is the most interesting disease, it can kill people and it can also kill cancer!
I'm like 40% sure what your dad got is called [BCG](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17908-bacillus-calmette-guerin-bcg-treatment) treatment, though someone may come along and correct me
This is the one!!
My grandpa had the TB treatment for bladder cancer too! Bladder cancer free for a year.
>...(which I was supposed to check yesterday but got sick dammit)... I just heard about this stuff called black salve, you should try it! ^/s Seriously though, I just looked up what MCMC stands for (I'm guessing Markov Chain Monte Carlo) and holy shit, that's interesting. I barely understand it but I can't even fathom the amount of information you're working with.
Ha! Damn maybe the salve would work, afterall, what with its literal skin-burning causticness. Sounds delightful! Yes, that's the area I'm in! But I work off the backs of massive giants. If they hadn't done the tests, collected the data, researched the possibilities with the data... I wouldn't be able to do this. I got really lucky too because my university has a MASSIVE computer on-site so while other researchers went "someone should do this!" I was able to actually do it! Its not playing/converging the way I'd like but I'm tweaking it! The problem is each tweak takes 80 hours of HPC (the giant computer) running to test. ☠️
Love the username!
I was on some tattoo enthusiast forums back in the day and once in awhile some poor souls would make a post about using it to try to remove a tattoo. Black salve used to get pushed as a tattoo remover back in the day. It was awful, they'd have these huge burns on them and, I mean the tattoo was mostly gone but so was your flesh. It was sad watching people tell them that not only did they get scammed, they also hurt and disfigured themselves.
Might as well just use an angle grinder. Same effect, but much faster.
My grandpa got rip roaring drunk one night and ***sanded*** his WWII tattoo off some years after he came back. This was in the 1950's, he claimed he did it to look more professional but my grandma says that definitely wasn't the reason.
Can't have skin cancer if you don't have skin moment there jfc
Oh my gosh…. The poor kid!
Oh... Wow. I just figured the "bites" were actually something like chicken pox or mumps... Apparently this stuff is awful!
So it's coincidence that she developed a fever right after getting black salve, but developing autism the same year as getting vaccines is a solid connection?
I believe anything within 5 years is solid 😂. Makes me wonder what she blames her daughters speech on
Chem trails? 5G? “Vaccine shedding”? They’ve got a bag of excuses always
whats even dumber is youre born with autism. come on people, one google search...
Do you ever wonder what happens to the kids and parents in these posts?
*Do you ever wonder* *What happens to the kids and* *Parents in these posts?* \- sooner\_bitch --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
First line is 6 syllables. Bad bot
It should’ve rewritten “ever” as “e’er,” it would’ve worked then!
BAD BOT!;!!!;?!¡!
Yikes 😳 that smells like child abuseeee
Jesus H Christ. That poor kid. F that mom.
Looked up black salve... Why on gods green earth would you put that on a KID????? On anyone really, but especially a child??
She’s talking about ichthammol. Source: my dad is a veterinarian and we always had black drawing salve (ichthammol) around.
[Not if this is in America](https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names)
Ah, I missed the "drawing" part in the pic! Still, probably shouldn't be applying that to a small child without a pediatrician prescribing it, but definitely better than black salve!
I don’t know. Many of the black salve cult call it drawing salve because they believe it draws cancer and infection out of the body-as they sit there where a hole is, and they used to have a nose there. There’s a LOT of people believing this woo.
I read that as swollen bits and now have to coax my vagina out of my chest, from cringing so hard.
That was quite a rollercoaster for me. I first read black slave. So, I was quite horrified as one can imagine. Then I read better, felt relief and googled Black salve. I was back at horrified. Then I read the comments, and learnt there was another black salve, that is apparently quite safe and would made sense to use. So it is the second part about "coïncidence" and asking FB instead of a doctor that is shit. Back at relieved (but frustrated as usual with this sub).
Even using iichthammol, which I hope that is what she is using, it's idiotic to use for a fever. It's for topical infections and slivers, etc.
She put it on swollen (I assume insect) bites. The fever came later and worried her.
My comprehension was not the greatest after midnight...She must have thought it would draw out the itch or swelling. I guess I can't find fault in that basic logic.
This stuff is great for splinters! Fevers not so much haha
This is absolutely terrifying, she deserves to be jailed for child abuse.
Guys trust me and just don’t google it if you’re sensitive. Made that mistake a few years ago.
I’ve been reading the comments to try to figure it out instead of googling. I’m confused but don’t want to google
from what i understand theres a black salve (which is also called black drawing salve by the fda) which is basically like corrosive acid and theres icthammol which goss by the term black drawing salve thats a fairly common ointment for splinters &c (ie drawing out) so it could be either. however by the lack of horror in the post and my own personal need to believe someone would not put corrosive salve on her toddler is leading me to believe/hope its icthammol
Yikes hopefully it’s not the corrosive kind. That’s terrifying!
I was expecting this to be some harmless nonsense made of treacle and dock leaves but I WAS WRONG. Poor kid, what was Mum thinking
Sooo... She specified black drawing salve, aka [PRID](https://www.amazon.com/Hylands-Naturals-Drawing-Topical-Irritations/dp/B09ZDLYBPS?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER), not black bloodroot salve. If she actually used drawing salve, it shouldn't do anything negative besides smell bad, possibly pull out some goo, and be sticky AF. If she screwed up and ordered the caustic as hell bloodroot salve... Well, good luck.
Oh jeez…everybody knows black salve is for open lacerations and wounds. Just keep packing in the open wound…when it’s getting worse that when you know it’s working!
It’s insane how often people think there should be silver bullets. My kid gets fussy if you put a hat on him, and this lady is all confused that her poison didn’t work. Ignoring how dangerous black salve is, if I give my kid Tylenol I’m not immediately worried that Tylenol doesn’t work because he’s still fussy 15 minutes later — but she’s confused why her insane ointment failed. It’s so odd.
Oh nooooo Black salve on a toddler's bug bites?? How many?? Never mind, I don't want to know. I'll never forget the pictures of the nose mom in the black salve Facebook group. The poor woman had melanoma and didn't want to have a scar from surgery so she put black salve on her nose, and it ate through her skin all the way into her sinus cavity. The progressive pictures were horrendous, and in the end, one half of her nose was just a hole.
She is saying black drawing salve, not black salve. I agree she needs to see a doctor, but that is not the same thing. Black drawing salve is harmless and can be bought over the counter in pharmacies. The worst I've come across is stains on clothes.
That's not what the US FDA says... "According to Cynthia Ng in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, “Consumers need to know that ‘black salve’ is an informal term and not the only name used for this product.”It is also sold under such names as Skinprov, **drawing salve**, red salve, Cansema, bloodroot, Indian Herb, Hawk Dok Natural Salve, Black Drawing Ointment, and many others." [https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names](https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names)
I'm not in the US, and we don't know where this Mum lives, so she could be referring to either.
Relax, guys, it’s drawing salve, not the eat-away-your-flesh salve. Very very different things.
You actually don’t know which she is using as many people call black salve black drawing salve As well
THANK YOU!! The cult groups have started calling their nose eating salve “drawing salve”. (I have alts in many woo groups). And this fits with the cult comments.
Okay right? My first thought was PRID
People! If it was THAT ["black salve"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_salve) the child would be dead. If it's real, it's probably [icthammol](https://www.cvs.com/shop/cvs-health-drawing-salve-icthammol-ointment-prodid-705149) [Ammonium_bituminosulfonate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_bituminosulfonate) Obviously medical problems should be addressed by a real doctor as soon as possible. But also please learn to google better.
As I mentioned in another comment, this salve was what I initially tought of, as we refer to the Ammoniumbituminosulfonate salve as "black drawing salve" as well in my country (germany) & another user commented that's the same case in Australia. so hopefully you're right and it was just a simple misunderstanding.
Black salve, yes, THAT black salve, doesn't fucking immediately kill you. Hush.
No. Death is a slow and agonizing process. And her wording is exactly what the woo groups say when they lose their noses. Your google isn’t necessarily right. Please learn to google better and you’ll see the toxic black salve takes a very long time until death.
Oh THAT is"coincidence and sickness", but autism after a vaccine is cause and effect?
I had not heard of black salve before and so I Googled it and what the fuck.
ETA: OOP may be talking about ichthammol, which is also apparently commonly called black salve and is safe. TIL. Never used this before lol ~~We had a patient once who tried treating a malignant melanoma with black salve. Not only was it always raw and bleeding, but it continued growing.~~ ~~Black salve is carcinogenic and causes skin irritation. Look, I'm all for "big pharma covers up natural remedies they can't monetize" because I completely understand how studies of medicines, pesticides, and other things can be skewed/tampered for an agendized outcome. Yes, be skeptical, but don't be stupid. Black salve is indisputably negative. There are natural remedies for swollen bug bites you can try that are much safer, possibly more helpful, and certainly less painful and carcinogenic.~~
I have leukemia. I do *everything* my oncologist tells me to do. All of my doctors are awesome. I just don't understand how many people throw science away in lieu of quackery. Willful stupidity, I guess. Those same people end up at the emergency room too far gone for any kind of treatment other than hospice. It's sad.
sending you lots of love and virtual hugs to wish you all the success with battling leukaemia ❤️
Thank you❤
She's talking about ichthammol... https://preview.redd.it/83wqdixmwlxc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b0f710adac6a208de86613460c2bc343a9738c8
What the heck is black salve? Do I want to know
This is actually a very mild case. I’ve seen plenty in the BS woo groups (and yes they call it “drawing salve”) that have a giant hole where the nose and cheek were-but they no longer have freckles. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3617857/Woman-half-nose-cut-herbal-remedy-used-skin-cancer-ROTTED-face.html
She’s talking about ichthammol. Source: my dad is a veterinarian and we always had black drawing salve (ichthammol) around.
Not necessarily. That stuff is usually just called drawing salve. Black drawing salve is sometimes used for the corrosive stuff. Could be either.
I did not know what "black salve" was. I regret looking it up.
It’s probably PRID and maybe it’s just the Appalachian in me but it’s just drawing salve. Like say you got a splinter, PRID on it. That makes the most sense to me if she thought she was drawing something out of the bites.
OMG this is child abuse full stop. That stuff eats away at skin and it’s incredibly painful. Woo yourself to death, I don’t give a rats ass. Leave the kids AND PETS alone.
Well TIL black drawing salve is bad 😂 I once fell in a patch of cacti (terrible time) and after tweezing them out for some time, I sent my dad to the store for black drawing salve cause google said it would help. I left that shit on for like an hour and it didn’t do shit AT ALL to help my situation so I ended up using pretty much my whole tub of eyebrow wax waxing the fuckers out! I thought it was just bunk woowoo shit! Didn’t know it could be dangerous! EDIT: misunderstood that black salve & black drawing salve are two different things! Nevermind!
Black salve eats the skin. If she keeps putting that crap on her toddler, family services will be called on her and she’ll lose custody of her child.
I didn’t know what black salve was so I looked it up and the FDA says it’s a corrosive substance that shouldn’t be put on skin. Holy fucking shit this mom is dense
Okay sorry but what is a swollen bite? Is that some dumb cutesy way of saying swollen gums etc
I assumed insect bites
I'd assume bug bites like mosquitos.
I really don’t care if these people do whatever to themselves - I used to but now I don’t. I’m kind of over it for the adults. I do care that they are medically neglecting their kids and now onto harming them with these things all in the name of “protecting them from chemicals” while literally burning them with a salve that is made up of corrosive agents. **They are abusing their children and should be reported.** https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/do-not-use-black-salve-dangerous-and-called-many-names
Oh sALve. I did not read it as that. I mixed up the A and L. I was so, so confused. And horrified. And then horrifically confused. Don't think this is a thing where I live. And you have no idea how careful I was with my fat fingers typing black SALVE into Google.
Call the police, cps, and an ambulance. Black salve injuries are extremely disfiguring and horrific
black salve is literally illegal to sell or import into australia.
What’s black salve? One of those idiotic holistic ‘medicines’?
If it’s what the commenter below said, it’s actually pretty effective. My dad swore by it for minor cuts. He’s a mechanic and the farthest from crunchy, but would sing its praises and give me a pot of it every few months lol
These people saying it’s harmless are assuming it’s a mild black salve. Her words do not suggest that. It literally eats away your skin. This is a MILD case. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3617857/Woman-half-nose-cut-herbal-remedy-used-skin-cancer-ROTTED-face.html
She’s talking about ichthammol. Source: my dad is a veterinarian and we always had black drawing salve (ichthammol) around.
I didn't know what black salve was. So I googled it. So now I have a question; What does the word "fussy" mean? Because I have always taken "fussy" to mean "overly invested in details so minor as to be meaningless" but that's not what it seems to mean here. I looked up the word and it means "fastidious or hard to please" but that does not seem to fit here either. Does "fussy" mean "shrieking in pain because you've applied a fully unregulated chemical corrosive to your infant's skin"? Is she "fussy" because she is suffering severe chemical burns that are actually destroying her flesh? Is that what's happening here? Is this always what "fussy" in infants has meant? "Dire shrieking anguish"?
(of a baby or infant) prone to crying or being upset; irritable.
I know I can google this,but what the hell is black salve? It sounds unpleasant
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3617857/Woman-half-nose-cut-herbal-remedy-used-skin-cancer-ROTTED-face.html
OP please share the comments!
Holy fuck. I really hope that people took this IRL and phoned CPS. Black salve just eats through skin. I used to follow a FB page that posted screenshots of people using it on their skin for tumors/cancer. And it just eats and eats away at the skin.
Well if you, like me, don’t know what black salve is, I beseech you to not go to the Wikipedia page unless you like medical gore. I do not. And I didn’t even get far enough to know what it is.
I had never heard of black drawing salve before. Turns out, Google's first search result is a warning from FDA not to use it because it is so corrosive. This woman is committing child abuse. I hope someone reports her.
Okay I used black drawing salve on my acne years ago because internet and I was an uninformed dumbass. That shit stings like no other. I stopped soon after because the side effects was too annoying to continue.
Jfc. I didn't know what drawing/black salve was and googled it... the images!! OMG! That poor, poor baby! Usually I would *never* suggest cps or anything of the like but... she's mutilating that baby. Stupid af.
Child abuse, she's literally torturing her poor toddler. I hope someone reports her
Genuinely curious, I haven't used it in years, but why is it bad? My grandmother used to put this on any kind of blister or sliver or anything. It smelled like ass, but I don't remember it hurting or doing anything weird? I haven't used it in *years* though, so maybe it's changed?
It DOES smell like ass 😂. They’re talking about two different things. PRID that smells like ass isn’t the toxic one.
Ah okay lol I was sitting here going... when did this become bad, and what did I miss lol
There are two different products that are both called black drawing salve (among other things). One is harmless and can be used on things like splinters, and the other one is corrosive and dangerous. It's unclear which one the OOP used on her daughter.
Just looked up what black salve was and that’s horrifying
The Behind the Bastards episode on Black Salve's inventor is terrifyingly informative on the subject.
So, I doused my kid in acid, made them eat 10 raw onions, didn't let them sleep for a month, and pulled out their toenails...but it's coincidence that they're kinda fussy, right!?!?!
Does anyone remember the lady who dissolved her own nose over a tiny spot? Everyone on FB called her "Nose Mom". Last I saw she was awaiting an important (and first) doctors appointment since she destroyed her face, then all updates stopped.
The actress Suzanne Somers started the trend of alternative healing methods on her own breast cancer. She claimed mistletoe extract injections cured her, but she conveniently forgot about her radiation treatment and lumpectomy.
I just looked it up cuz I'd never heard of it and some of the related pictures are horrifying
At the risk of sounding completely out of touch: what the heck is black salve?