Cure for burned fingers

• St John Ambulance - Burns Treatment

Now for the fun part. One of my coworkers, we call him "Alex the mad Russian", because he's from the old country and has some kind of temper. He swears to smear sour cream on it. None of us, including the Red Cross lady had ever heard that one, so we rubbed it in (not sour cream) for the rest of the class. Cardiac arrest? Rub on sour cream? Heat stroke? Dip in sour cream. We had to stop though, cause old Alex was gettin' pretty mad, and if we hadn't, some of us were gonna be needin some first aid (sour cream) for real. He was maaaaad.

Never heard of the ear lobe trick and will have to give it a try.

When I was 10yrs old or so, I watched my Mother get blown accross the room from a gas furnace she was trying to lite.

The majority of the heat blast hit her on the face, burnt all of her eye brows off (both eyes), burnt all her eye lashs off (both eyes), burnt nose hairs and most of her hair 2" back off of her forehead.

She applied cold water then a burn medicene called Foil. Foil was for sun burns and such that was popular in the late 50's thru the early 70's. Close too a butter type product. No scars or blisters formed on her face.

Now that I'm more educated, I know what happened to cause this. Mom tried to lite the pilot lite than had blown out. The gas valve had pilot safety so she depressed the pilot lite button and tried to lite the pilot lite and it would not lite.

She heated the thermocouple enough with several stick matchs trying to lite the pilot that allowed enough heat to complete the safety circuit of the thermocouple allowing the main gas valve circuit to orperate.

When the pilot would not lite, she turned the gas valve to "on", and that caused raw main burner gas to be dumped into the combustion chamber without being ignitited, she then struck another match to lite the pilot.

She got the 2nd match (1st match went out) about 6" away from the burner fresh air inlet when the gas exploded.

I was lucky that I was standing 10ft away and didn't get any of the blast.

A Service man was called and all I remember him saying was that it was "impossible" to happen that way. Mom argued that was the secquence of events. I finally piped up with "just look at her face! "

It was dust on the pilot orifice that kept the pilot from lighting and why the furnace checked out ok.

Seams like a good reason to have your gas furnace/water heater serviced once per year like is recomended.

The Chineese have been using a honey, silver and herbs mixture for a burn medicine for several thousand years. Our current medical practices for burns now incorperate this mixture.

T_Bone

• Silvadene

Your story reminds me of my grammy taking my out fishin for gills. I got stuck by a dorsal fin. She rubbed the side of the fish on the wound, 5 minutes later no pain.
FWIW

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If it truly is a heat conductivity thing, wouldn't it make more sense to put it on any other room temperature object that is nearby? Assuming, of course, that room temperature is well below 98 degrees. A cold cement floor comes to mind.

Interesting though. I've never heard of this one. My mom always told me to put butter on a burn.