I remember a guy I knew in Hawai'i who was afflicted with multiple sclerosis. During a discussion of natural remedies for all sorts of ailments, I asked if he had heard of Bee Venom Therapy. Bee stings are used to treat the symptoms of MS [more here].
He had heard of it, and although he hadn't considered trying it, he mentioned he was attacked by a swarm in his youth. If I remember the story, the swarm nearly killed him; wasps or hornets, or something along those lines. He thought the great number of stings he received that day might have had something to do with his success in battling MS. I don't remember the specifics, but most folks who had MS as long as he had were crippled by the disease; he was still walking and driving, although things were starting to head downhill a bit for him.
Of course, it's anecdotal. Check the extended entry for another great story.
A very cool story. So cool, I won't excerpt from it; I'll just send you over there to read the whole thing. [via the Insta-dude]
Of course, having no medical background except the Boy Scouts twenty years ago, and a high speed internet connection today, I couldn't tell Doctor Barnard from Dr. J.. Sometimes, however, there's a bit of truth in those anecdotes.
I had a huge wart on my thumb as a kid, growing under and deforming the nail. It seemed to get bigger and bigger by the week. One night, while listening to WFAN and sorting through my baseball cards, a tale was told about a baseball pitcher who had a wart on one of the fingers of his throwing hand which negatively impacted his game. Cutting the wart out would require that he miss some starts, so instead he followed the advice of an old-timer: he cut a hole in a potato, and slept with the tuber on his afflicted finger. The next day, the wart was gone. Another day or so and he was ready to pitch.
I told this story to the dermitologist, who had barely managed [through painful procedures] to slow the growth of the wart. He shrugged it off.
I slept that night with my thumb inside of a potato; the next day the monster was black, and much of it crumbled away, leaving tender skin beneath. I tried it again the next night. More dead skin, and with a quick probe the rest of the beast fell away. There was a huge opening beneath the nail, which was packed with anti-biotics by Dr. Mom. Within a few days the nail had more or less returned to normal. The doc didn't take the news real well, and his arrogance was obvious even to a twelve-year old.
Between the wart-destroyin' and digital clock powerin', I figured the spud was the ultimate. Think about it. You get french fries from them. You can design a cannon to fire them at terrorists and hippies. I'm surprised we're not driving cars that use them as fuel.
Well, maybe someday. Some folks are powering their servers with them.
