Treating a Bullet Wound with Processed White Sugar

To help heal seriously infected wounds, some surgeons have revived a 4,000-year-old treatment, born on the battlefields of ancient Egypt: they pack the depths of treacherous wounds with sweet substances like sugar.

Dressings made of sugar and honey, favored by healers throughout history, fell into disfavor with the development of antibiotics over half a century ago. But even the most sophisticated modern preparations have proved unable at times to overcome the hearty bacteria that live in deep wounds, and a handful of doctors, mostly in Europe, are turning once again to sugar ''It's a very old and very simple treatment which was forgotten for a while but is now coming back, like a fashion,'' said Prof. Rudy Siewert, chairman of the department of surgery at the Klinikum Rechts der Isar in Munich, West Germany.

Renaissance vs. Skepticism

Professor Siewert said that in the last five years the technique had enjoyed a wide renaissance in Germany and to a lesser extent in the rest of Europe. Despite the interest abroad, most American surgeons express mild skepticism.

''For the right kind of wound it works fine, and it's fun to look at an ancient remedy,'' said Dr. Mary H. McGrath, chief of the division of plastic surgery at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Doctors there have used sugar to treat uninfected bedsores. ''But there are about 600 lotions and potions for healing wounds, and I think you can get a lot more effect with our contemporary local antibacterials.''

Experts say the ancient treament probably works because sugar tends to draw water into its gritty midst, through osmosis. This action both dries the bed of the wound to promote new tissue growth and dehydrates the bacteria that cause infection, leaving them weak and fragile. Several American pharmaceutical concerns make expensive wound pastes composed of synthetic microscopic water-absorbing beads that perform this same function. Revival Began in U.S. Although sugar dressings have few American advocates, Europeans ascribe the current revival in part to the work of an American, Dr. Richard A. Knutson, an orthopedic surgeon in Greenville, Miss., who published one of the few papers on the technique a decade ago.

About 15 years ago, frustrated by stubborn, pus-filled wounds filled with bacteria resistent to all drugs, Dr. Knutson began experimenting with sugar dressings at the suggestion of a retired nurse who had worked in the Deep South before the antibiotic era.

''When we started I thought it was absolutely nuts,'' Dr. Knutson said in a recent telephone interview. ''Sugar! The first thing you think about is the old jar of marmalade in the fridge growing all that junk. You think you'll create a perfect medium for bacterial growth. That turned out not to be the case.''

He has since used a salve made of sugar, which he now mixes with a mild bacteria-killing iodine liquid, on about 6,000 patients with anything from burns to shotgun wounds. The mixture is applied as a paste. ''It's easy to use, painless, inexpensive, and it works,'' he said, ''You can't ask for more. If it has a fancy name and cost $300 a bottle everyone would be buying it.'' Most European surgeons use sugar alone.

The care of deep wounds is a major challenge to surgeons. Although doctors sew up small clean cuts, the skin above penetrating injuries that are likely to be infected is generally left open, both to allow the doctors to clean the cavity and to allow the body to grow new tissue, called granulation tissue, from the deep wound base.

New Tissue Fills Wound

Over weeks to months, the wound becomes sterile and slowly fills with new tissue. Systemic antibiotics are often required to aid the healing process. Sometimes skin and muscle must be surgically moved from other parts of the body to cover areas that would otherwise never completely heal.

Using the resurrected technique, doctors alter the usual cleaning regimen by sprinkling granulated sugar or spreading sugar paste in the wound two to four times a day, before applying new bandages. The sugar liquefies somewhat as it absorbs fluid from the wound, so it is simple to rinse out the sugar, along with dead tissue, at the next dressing change.

Doctors who use the method say that even dirty injuries are often germ-free after several days and that wounds seem to heal faster and more completely than with conventional treatments.

''The granulation tissue is much pinker and healthier,'' said Dr. B. G. Spell, a surgeon at the Methodist Rehabilitation Hospital in Jackson, Miss., who says he uses the technique daily to heal infected amputations and the deep pressure sores that plague paraplegics. ''The dead tissue breaks down more easily, so there's not as much debridement,'' he said.

In a series of articles in the British medical journal Lancet over the last five years, doctors at various European medical centers have reported success using the technique in a variety of situations in which nothing else worked. Dr. J. L. Trouillet at the Hopital Bichat in Paris described using granulated sugar bought from a supermarket for successful treatment of 19 critically ill cardiac surgery patient who had mediastinitis, a frequently deadly infection of the compartment in the chest that contains the heart.

Patients expecting high-tech medicine are often surprised to find their injuries sweetened. ''The doctors had mentioned that they were going to use 'wound sugar,' but it didn't register,'' said John Tagliabue, a New York Times reporter who was shot and seriously wounded last December while covering the revolution in Romania.

Like Cookie Crumbs

His wound was packed with sugar at the Klinikum in Munich, where he was moved for treatment. ''One day I noticed this sandy material on the sheets, like crumbs from eating cookies in bed.'' he said. ''Then it hit me: They really meant sugar.''

Will the enthusiasm for the revival spread to the Americas? ''There are better treatments these days,'' said Dr. McGrath, in an opinion that half a dozen prominent American surgeons echoed in interviews. Dr. McGrath's own research includes studying the effect of molecules called growth factors, manufactured by genetically altering organisms, on a type of cell involved in healing.

''Over all, I think the Europeans are a little less rigorous in their journals,'' she said. And, in truth, despite nearly 4,000 years of use, there are no comparative scientific studies of sugar dressings to be found.

But Professor Siewert has a slightly different take on the issue. ''The American way is more scientific,'' he said, ''The European way sometimes comes more from history and experience. That's good, too.''

Other Remedies From History

Until a century ago, doctors applied leeches for almost every illness in the mistaken belief that they would draw out ''bad blood.'' Today they are used after microsurgery that reattaches fingers, toes and other body parts. An operation can fail because tiny blood vessels become clogged. But when a small European leech, Hirudo medicinalis, is attached, it sucks out an ounce or two of blood from the clogged vessels. The leech's saliva containes an anticoagulant and an antiseptic.

Maggots, fly larvae, once allowed to clean festering battlefield wounds, have been used to save the legs of a 17-year-old girl who developed a blood infection that caused clotting in her legs. Oral antibiotics could not reach the sores, so physicians at Children's Hospital in Washington D.C., applied 1,500 maggots. They ate away dead skin while allowing healthy skin to thrive.

Scientists have also validated a folk remedy for cuts used by Arab fishermen. The Arabian saltwater catfish, Arius bilineatis, secretes a slimy, gellike substance that contains proteins that coagulate blood to stop bleeding and enzymes that speed the growth of new tissue.

Photo: Dr. Richard A. Knutson demonstrating the use of a sugar paste for wounds on Richard Blake at Delta Medical Center, Greenville, Miss. (The New York Times/Vicki Van Hook); graph showing how the average number of clinic visits required for patients with serios wounds, burns or external ulcers droped sharply after sugar treatments started in '76) (source: Richard A. Knutson, M.D.)

Off-Grid ‘Kitchen Cures’ When Antibiotics Won’t Work

If you’re wary of using conventional antibiotics to treat common infections, there are numerous alternative remedies you could consider.  I discovered the power of naturopathy when I treated my family’s recent staph and viral infections using healing foods right out of my kitchen.

My 12-year-old son contracted a skin infection from a playmate, developing a boil on his leg the size of a small pea. It was pink, inflamed and had pus in the center, which is characteristic of a staph infection. First we treated it with iodine, thinking it was minor and would go away in a few days. But when one became two, then three, and multiplying up to eight, I was petrified! I tried calendula and colloidal silver, to no avail.

Eventually, I picked it up, too. And so did my 10-year-old daughter, who has eczema on her legs.  Because her skin was already compromised, she became more ill than the rest of us. She developed a fever and on the third day she had distinctive pustules filled with yellowish-white pus. (I wish I could show you photographs, but you wouldn’t want to see them – they’re horrifying and difficult to view). Although I’m a stickler for natural treatments, I caved in and rushed her to a doctor. As expected, the dermatologist prescribed a round of oral antibiotics, combined with topical steroids. For my son and me, she prescribed an anti-bacterial cream.

Within a few days of medical treatment, we recovered. But after her oral dose ended, my daughter’s infection came back. That’s when I suspected the bug was methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, which is a strain of bacteria that’s developed resistance to common antibiotics. Either that or the strain that attacked us just mutated after a round of Augmentin (amoxicillin) and developed into a stronger form.

I was afraid that if I took my child back to the doctor, she would just be given another round of antibiotics, possibly a stronger one. And knowing that pharmaceutical antibiotics kill both bad and good bacteria in the gut, causing microbial imbalance – a problem most eczema sufferers are known to have – I resolved not to take her back. I searched instead for more effective natural treatments and that was when I discovered the potency of garlic, honey and high doses of vitamin C.

Though my research yielded a variety of natural alternatives for treating MRSA, the ones I used were garlic, honey and lime — simply because I had plenty of them at home.  A clove or about a teaspoon of chopped raw garlic with wild honey, every five to six hours, didn’t elicit protests from my daughter. Especially if it was downed with freshly made lime-o-nade, with the same raw honey to sweeten it. (I used calamondins, our local variety; but I’m sure you can use lemons).  I also gave her 250mg of ascorbic acid twice a day, to augment the vitamin C in the lime. To finish the job, I applied garlic oil – crushed raw garlic steeped in virgin coconut oil – twice daily on the boils. I used a dropper and a cotton ball to spread it. Within four days, all traces of the recurring staph were gone. For good. No additional trip to the doctor was made, no extra dollar spent and no worries about toxic side effects.

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Garlic is a proven, plant-based antibiotic with the ability to combat a broad spectrum of bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, yeasts, molds and various parasites. People around the world have been using it for centuries to treat all types of infections, from cancer to tuberculosis. For a comprehensive list of illnesses it is used for, click here.

Unlike synthetic antibiotics, which are simple in their chemical composition, garlic is highly complex. It has over 27 known active ingredients and dozens more that work in yet undiscovered ways. This makes it difficult for bacteria to contend with and overcome. In fact, European scientists who studied and proved garlic’s potency against 10 different microbes found a “complete absence of development resistance” in garlic. According to drugs.com, the potency of garlic is such that one milligram is equivalent to 15 Oxford units of penicillin.

To make ingesting garlic easier, especially for children, coat it in honey – which also happens to be a potent antibiotic.  (I’m sure chocolate syrup would work, but honey is far more beneficial.)  You’ll have to use fresh garlic, though. Allicin, the most potent chemical that’s released once a clove is sliced or crushed, oxidizes easily so try to take it within 15 minutes of chopping.

And like conventional antibiotics and anti-virals, you’ll have to take garlic for a minimum of one week or you’ll run the risk of having a relapse. I made that mistake when I used the same treatment for a viral infection. I was so convinced of the power of my garlic-honey-lime remedy that I used it to treat the swollen, painful lymph nodes that my kids developed.  Because they also were running a high fever, indicative of a full-blown infection, I increased the dose to one clove/tsp. every three hours. Each time, I also smothered garlic oil on their necks below the ears where the nodes were sore, and on the soles of their feet twice a day as a trans-dermal therapy.  The treatment was effective, but once the symptoms improved, I brought the dose down immediately to three times per day or every eight hours. The kids suffered a rebound. For a systemic, high-grade infection like that, I would recommend administering a dose six to eight times a day. Increase the time between doses by an hour as soon as symptoms improve – most likely on the third or fourth day – until you’re down to just three times a day.

Please be aware that I have no medical background whatsoever. I’m only recommending this as an alternative for those who, like me, want to avoid pharmaceutical antibiotics and their known side effects.

The minimum number of days I’d advise anyone to take garlic, for medicinal purposes, is seven days. Extend up to 10 if you want to be guaranteed of zero relapse. My family continues to take it twice a day to boost our immune systems and take care of possible candida overgrowth in our guts that may have developed from previous doses of antibiotics.

One important reminder, too. Garlic is known to be an anti-coagulant, so don’t do this treatment if you’re already taking blood thinners or are recovering from surgery. Take care against possible allergic reactions, or slight irritation in the mouth or the stomach lining. If your tummy gets easily upset, don’t ingest raw garlic on an empty stomach. There have been reports of bloating, gas and slight nausea in people who can’t tolerate it easily. But other than those, the only other unpleasant side effect most healthy people can expect from eating this amazing allium is bad breath and body odor.

Editor’s note: If you have a health concern, consult with your primary health care provider for a proper diagnosis.

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