- For thousands of years people have survived without the use of antibiotics. Many early treatments for infected wounds involved honey. Both the Smith Papyrus of 1700 B.C. and the Ebers Papyrus of 1500 B.C. describe the treatment of severe wounds and burns with coagulated milk and honey held in place by a muslin bandage. Later granulated sugar was used to treat sores in both horse and humans. Today a mixture known as sugardine is widely used to treat sores and wounds on horses. It has proved to be effective and is inexpensive.
Sugar is bacteriostatic, fungistatic, and anti-infective. This means that it does not promote bacteria or fungus growth. Sugar by itself has been used for wound treatment and shown to be effective in the following link: http://www.woundsinternational.com/case-reports/the-use-of-granulated-sugar-to-treat-two-pressure-ulcers.
But sugardine a mixture of iodine and sugar has proved to be more effective. The American Farriers Journal Special Management Report #1…Using Sugar To Treat Those Nasty Wounds stated the following. “One study was done over a 5-year period in which 605 human patients were treated exclusively with sugardine. In nearly all cases, these patients (whose injuries included ulcers, cat scratches and gunshot wounds) healed more rapidly with sugardine than any alternative method of treatment”.
You can purchase various sugardine mixtures at many places that sell medications for horses and other animals or you can make it yourself.
Ingredients for sugardine.
Table Sugar
10% povidone iodine (or the more expensive but easier to find betadine)
Procedure:
mix one part 10% povidone iodine to two parts white sugar.
Adding more or less sugar makes it the consistency of thick honey or peanut butter.
Put the sugardine in a container with a tight fitting lid. The mixture will need stirring now and then but it will never go bad.
It is my understanding that with a large open wound you pack it with sugardine and then bandage it. Please understand that I am not a Doctor and have had no specialized medical training. Any
suggestion I have made in this post are only for a situation in which modern medicine is no longer available.
I remember when I was child, whenever you got a cut or scrape your parents treated it with an antiseptic. Today I no longer see it emphasized as much. But as soon as the antibiotics go in short supply, people will need to go back to this practice. So be sure to stock up on antiseptics.