Buskruit: geneeskundige werking?

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Zwavel en koolstof zijn de enige niet-metalen die reeds lang voor onze jaartel­ling bekend waren. Zwavel werd reeds in de Oudheid als geneesmiddel gebruikt. Homerus vermeldt het gebruik van zwavel als ontsmettingsmiddel; de Romeinen gebruikten het als dermatologisch geneesmiddel.

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Op donderdag 13 mei 2004 23:47 schreef boyv het volgende:
Het zou best buskruit kunnen zijn trouwens, ik vond net dit stukje:
[..]

In buskruit zit ook zwavel, samen met een sterk oxidatiemiddel.

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Snakebite treatment is to this day steeped in controversy: Ice or no ice? To suck or not to suck? Constriction band or tourniquet?

Still, the variety of modern first aid procedures on offer is nothing compared to the cornucopia of cures championed in centuries past.

The Greeks and Romans favoured peppermint and garlic.

Dioscorides, a famous Greek herbalist (herbal med)of the First Century AD wrote of the latter "it assists both those viper-bitten and those bitten by the blood snake like nothing else, taken together with wine or crushed with wine or crushed and drunk with it".

Pliny the Elder, the famous Roman encyclopedist and a contemporary of Dioscorides, also exalted garlic's anti-snake poisoning potential, claiming that "it drives away serpents and scorpions with its smell [and] roasted with its own leaves, it is applied with oil, [working] very effectively for serpents' bites (strikes)."

A common cure for snakebite in more recent times was the practice of tying a ligature above the wound and sucking it. The wound was then left to bleed before washing it in ammonia or a tincture of iodine.

Sal volatile was also given to the patient as a treatment and to keep them awake.

For a more dramatic effect one could always resort to the sadistic method of filling the wound with gunpowder and blood before setting it alight!

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Chapter II : The Constitution And Therapeutic Power Of Gunpowder

The Gunpowder with which we are concerned is the traditional Black Gunpowder, whose three cardinal constituents are sulphur, carbon, and nitre or saltpetre.

Modern smokeless gunpowder is of a different composition.

As sulphur, carbon, and saltpetre are three potent medicines well known to pharmacy and physic, it is not surprising that a combination of the three should also be a medicine of great potency.

There is a certain piquancy in the fact that gunpowder is a remedy for the accidents of warfare ; but some instinct put into the minds of our soldiers of long ago that gunpowder could cure as well as kill.

The Indians of North America and Canada have found in it a remedy for snake-bites.

The shepherds of East Anglia, as already mentioned, use it extensively in treating their flocks and themselves for wounds and blood-poisoning of many kinds, and for protecting themselves against wound infection.

In the second volume of my Dictionary of Materia Medica, published in 1902, I have referred to some uses of Gunpowder in my article on Saltpetre (" Kalium nitricum "), recording also some experiments made with it on myself.

But my knowledge of the power of Gunpowder over blood-poisoning I owe to a graphic article contributed to the Homoeopathic World in 1911 by the Rector of Stradbroke, Suffolk, the Rev. Roland Upcher, entitled " Notes on the Use of Gunpowder (Black)."

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