Word: ointments
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...claims were little short of miraculous. A simple herbal ointment from China was allegedly accomplishing what the most sophisticated medical technology in the U.S. could not. Victims of severe burns, charred beyond recognition, recovered almost unblemished. Damaged skin that would normally require extensive surgery healed on its own. The searing pain of a blistering wound suddenly disappeared, without the aid of narcotics...
Those were the astonishing reports that appeared in the past year in a variety of publications -- from newsletters to Newsweek magazine -- concerning a substance developed in China called the Moist Burn Ointment. The stories raised hope among 100,000 Americans who suffer from severe burns each year that the Chinese may have made a breakthrough that could help ease the victims' pain...
...method is disarmingly simple. Doctors spread a thin layer of the ointment over the wounded area with a tongue depressor and keep the skin completely covered until it heals. So far, the treatment has been used on 50,000 burn patients in China and on several hundred elsewhere. Xu and colleagues traveled to Thailand last month to help treat victims of a gas explosion in Bangkok. In the U.S. the doctor has won converts at the New Jersey-based National Burn Victim Foundation. Xu, 32, who comes from a family of herbal-medicine specialists, will not reveal the ointment...
...doctor is less reticent about his results. He claims the ointment reduces pain almost on contact, lessening the need for narcotics. MBO also cuts healing time one-third for many burns, he says. And that reduction can sharply reduce scarring. Some cases requiring skin grafting operations in the U.S. can be treated with ointment alone, he contends. "I am totally confident," asserts Xu, "that the burn cure will be accepted here...
...after photographs prove little, since a few patients have healed surprisingly well under any circumstances. Concludes Dr. Fred Caldwell, president of the American Burn Association: "It's one thing to make claims of a miracle cure. It's another to back up those claims with good clinical trials." The ointment may ultimately prove to be of some value, but in medicine new treatments have to pass the test -- again and again -- before they become miracles...