Maggots and modern medicine
Posted by Ellee on May 3, 2007 in Uncategorized | 21 comments
It has to be one of the cheapest health cures 
around – using flesh eating maggots to help successfully treat MRSA patients in record time. But is there really no alternative from today’s high-tech modern medicine?
Some sceptics would ask if they were they simply being used as a cost-saving alternative to expensive antibiotic gels and lotions, an idea suggested by Labour MP Madeleine Moon. She described it as “a highly cost-effective, highly efficient but forgotten and undervalued method of treatment�.
Despite its apparent success on treating diabetics, using maggots to clean festering wounds has not been a triumph in America with squeamish patients giving it the thumbs down.
Leeches are also being used to drain excess blood, a remedy dating back to ancient Egypt, I wonder what other creepy crawlies could also be used to provide cures. These ancient treatments have obviously been proven over hundreds of years, it’s interesting to see how we are turning the clock back.
How would you feel about being treated this way? After childbirth, and one with no pain relief, I find I have quite a high tolerance level and believe I could go along with it if I had to, if it was the best treatment available.
I wonder if other countries are still using these remedies because they have no access to modern medicine, and which other ancient cures they are still be practising, in African villages, for example.
Man these are some disgusting creatures. Can’t imagine that can be good for anything, but i guess they can..
I generally use maggots for icefishing, but i guess we all put our maggots to different use…
This is an interesting post Ellee. Even though I realize that the idea of using these creatures in these ways is excellent and they work so well, I’m sure I would freak out if I were the one they were using them on. Leeches have proved very useful to establish blood flow after reattaching body parts.
Our bodies are already filled to the brim with infection eating bacteria. What makes these animals any different apart from the fact that one can visibly see them? And they, due to the fact that they are visible can be easily removed after the insertion.
BTW Ellee I think that you are gorgeous. Nothing to do with this actual issue but it must be stated.
Dog saliva is anti-septic – you don’t think I lick my bum for the fun of it do you ?
Maggots are good-cheap and efficient. We use bacteria and viruses for treatment, so why not bigger animals? I will generally reserve them for the less squeamish like New Manure, however. Lola gets antibiotics every time, of course
Maybe we should give the maggots names like Dave, Tony, Gordon or Menzies!
I am all for it, let’s do the most efficient things that work best. As long as the science backs it up.
Do some dedicated fishermen still put maggots in their mouth to keep them warm when they go fishing, or is that just an old wives tale.
Would I rather let maggots in my mouth than a trip to a dentists – hmmm – let me think.
But Elle the story says it reduces the time of healing from 89 days (with antibiotics) to five with maggots. And costs from a couple of thousand to a couple of hundred?
Is the issue money? – Wouldn’t you rather put up with maggots for 5 days, than antibiotics for 89, and/or any side effects from ‘drugs’
lol The Curmudgeon,
“we live a lot longer?”
you mean the ‘average’ life expectancy is higher than during world war II, or
when the Romans landed and we used to have weekend tribal brawls and play football with the heads of losers from other villages.
I think there are also myths of old men living till a ripe old age, though of course death from (or during) repeated chilbirth was more common or frequent than it is today.
However, I have always wondered how patients used to cope when there was no hip replacement surgery, no heart surgery, no keyhole surgery and NO cancer treatment.
‘I wonder what other creepy crawlies could also be used to provide cures.’ (ellee)
Perhaps wasps could be used to cure hypocondria?
I do believe that there are some forgotten and effective folk medicines. I believe in aloe vera, for instance, and here it is believed to have cancer-fighting properties. But maggots and leeches – no thank you!
Don’t want to even know about these. Where did you get this from, Ellee? Maggots indeed.
Ellee:
I thought the USA Today article examined these treatments in a positive way; my experience as a nurse here in the US has been that patients are generally willing to give the maggot treatment a try – especially the diabetics who face the loss of an extremity.
The MRSA issue, and the even more sinsister VRE issue, is something I hope more bloggers will start calling attention to.
The global pharmecutical industry has come up with multiple “erectile disfunction” drugs, expending billions for research and development, in the last 10 years, but no new antibiotics of note. Just how many ED drugs do we need? I would think a couple of them would be adequate, with the other billions going towards the development of a new generation of antibiotics.
Of course, the germs will continue to outwit us – evolution is smater than we are.
Before I met Ellee, I was a very keen match angler fishing in competitions all over the UK.
I used to breed my own special maggots known as “gozzers” using a piece of chicken, semi covered in a darkened corner of the shed. After a successful “blow”, I would let the maggots feed on the meat until they were ready to leave the meet. I would then transfer them to fresh bran which I would change regularly to stop them going sour. When the dark patch had all but disappeared the bait was ready.
The skin was always softer than commercially bred maggots and made a great hookbait for bream.
Just thought you might like to know that !!!
I’ve got nothing against learning — and re-learning — forgotten remedies of yore, from any culture, from any part of the world….
Although I certainly would be squeamish about maggots, I’m squeamish about a lot of things and I’ve submitted (eventually) with as much good grace as I can muster.
Just keep in mind one thing: We live a lot longer than the wise old ancients… so not all of their remedies worked better, did they?
I’d rather the patients didn’t get MRSA in the first place.
My father had maggot lavae treatment for an ulcer on his leg recently (on the NHS)
Newmania, I missed Casualty, there always seems to be so much romping about in that programme. My childbirth did not go according plan, hence no pain relief, but I still managed to have a gorgeous 10lb 2oz son, though he was born with a fractured collar bone. Yes, it would have been great to have mens sana around.
Snafu, glad to hear that.
The maggots are sterile and are very selective in that they only eat dead flesh.
It makes perfect sense.
I noticed this Ellee and you may not have spotted but it aopeard on Casualty the other day . What a good idea .
Most alternative medecine is of course a cynical fiction told for profit and out of a general wish to remain a child . This twaddle about natural births is typical of the bicameral state we have got into.
What sane woman would want to be anywhere but in a hospital where the kindly but firm hands of Men`s Sauna will be available to ease new life into being .
That is if he can spare the time.