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My father was as butter-fingered as I am. And during his shaves he would invariably nick his chin in several spots here and there.
And then emerged from his LG Hing Shaving Box a white crystalline cube that he used to rub his chin with.
And I asked him what it was called (he was my walking dictionary-cum-encyclopedia).
He said it was: "Alum"
Much later I came to know alum is an astringent (skin contractor). He seemed not to wince, so I concluded it was soothing to his bleeding nicks.
But not the after-shave lotion that I used to apply from its roller...that used to burn. It was alcohol.
Nowadays I see that alcohol-based hand-sanitizers are a rage.
(Hyderabadis are enterprising. I am told that during last year's severe lockdown they bought crates of hand-sanitizer bottles and distilled them to get their daily dose of alcohol...addiction can lead to crime).
My father was not that kind to me as he was to himself.
When I had regular bleeding wounds (that I didn't mind) on my two knees and two elbows (after roadside play) he used to drag me to his table and ask my didi to hold my hands. And as I screamed savagely, he would take out from his medicine chest a miserable bottle of the 'Tincture of Iodine' and apply it in profusion on my wounds
.
Which "biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder":
30They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
31Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
32At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
https://biblehub.com/kjv/proverbs/23.htm
'Tincture of Iodine' is iodine dissolved in alcohol.
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Medicine is a funny thing. And it saved my life (for what it is worth) on several occasions.
When I was 9 at Muthukur, I once had fever. And our good country-doctor, Ishwar Reddy, asked me to take 2 tablets thrice daily of the newest antibiotic: Sulfadiazine.
And then forgot to tell me to drink lots of water.
By 8 O'clock in the evening I was groaning with agony in my urinary tract...unable to pass its contents however hard I tried.
I thought I was dying.
Then materialized from nowhere, like God Himself, my maternal uncle Dr K Krishna Murthy who was then a house surgeon at KGH, Vizagh. And he opened his patent leather bag and pulled out a bottle of Alkasol, one dose of which relieved me instantly.
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In his medicine kit, father also had paper sachets of what he called "Potassium Permanganate". The powder inside them was as violet as the 'Gentian Violet' that I came to use on my wife during her last days.
Father used his Potassium Permanganate dissolved in water to gargle his throat whenever it was sore.
Later on I came to know that it is a terrific oxidizing agent.
In the year 1979, soon after I got married to my medico-wife, I was traveling by bus from Tirupati (where she was then lodged) to Gudur.
And midway I got this horrendous ache in my left ear. It was unbearable. As I walked from the Gudur bus stand to our home, not knowing what to do to, I saw a new private dispensary manned by a youthful doctor. I went in and he asked me to sit down on the stool by his side. And he pulled out his medicine chest and pumped some liquid into my left ear. Squirt Squirt Squirt. And within seconds the pain vanished like an exorcized ghost. And I asked him what that magic liquid was and he said:
"Hydrogen Peroxide"
I knew all about it having mugged it up from my chemistry book by PC Ray...it is a rapid oxidizing agent. It is a highly unstable compound and on contact with any surface it quickly releases nascent oxygen (monatomic) that is highly reactive...it killed all resident bacteria.
[Jim Corbett said somewhere that sudden freedom from pain, like sudden freedom from fear, are untellable reliefs (he was talking of villagers, cooped up in their homes for weeks in fear of their man-eater, coming out onto the streets celebrating wildly with drums and drinks and bonfires throughout the night that Jim shot the poor thing down and brought it to the village for skinning)]
And when I wrote to my wife about my adventure with H2O2, she prescribed Supristol tablets (sulfur compound). It cured my ear ache but I grew as weak as my brain now. And my wife returned to Gudur, saw me limp, and prescribed B-Complex capsules which roused me up like a corpse brought to life by the Muthukur street-magician.
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That reminds me of my son's predicament in 2002 (by when he got his home-desktop with a petulant internet connection).
One fine morning he suddenly developed unbearable pain in his scrotum on which appeared a pimple-like hard mass.
I took him at once to Dr NB Pal's Clinic in Prem Bazar outside our Qrs at IIT KGP. Unfortunately the good doctor was on a holiday, placing a new junior MBBS in charge. And the novice was at a loss, and on consulting his "Chatterjee & Chatterjee" medicine tome, decided that my son's symptoms looked like those of filaria (!)
And he prescribed "Banocide" tablets. And for pain relief he gave the brand new "Brufen" tablets.
Banocide didn't work for a week, much like the amulets of Muthukur hakim.
Nor did Brufen.
Then my son browsed his internet and went to the home page of the Harvard Medical School.
And discovered that it was nothing like filaria but a common bacterial infection (Epididymitis) easily curable by any sulfa drug.
My wife gave him: "Bactrim DS" and one tablet relieved his symptoms.
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And when my son was in his Class 8, I had to employ a home-tutor for him for his Hindi lessons.
`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.'
`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.
`That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.'
And one drop of it cured the damn thing permanently (so far).
| X Scale | C Scale | Ratio | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1X | ― | 1:10 | described as low potency |
| 2X | 1C | 1:100 | called higher potency than 1X by homeopaths |
| 6X | 3C | 10−6 | |
| 8X | 4C | 10−8 | |
| 12X | 6C | 10−12 | |
| 24X | 12C | 10−24 | Has a 60% probability of containing one molecule of original material if one mole of the original substance was used. |
| 26X | 13C | 10−26 | If pure water were used as the diluent, no molecules of the original solution remain in the water. |
| 60X | 30C | 10−60 | Dilution advocated by Hahnemann for most purposes: on average, this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient. |
| 400X | 200C | 10−400 | Dilution of popular homeopathic flu preparation Oscillococcinum |
| Note: the "X scale" is also called "D scale". 1X = 1D, 2X = 2D, etc. | |||
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