Maggots for medicine
Thought leeches were out of fashion in medicine? Well, they’re still around - and so are maggots.
While not everyone is enthused by the idea, clean and carefully bred maggots are being used to eat dead tissue from slow-healing wounds. Basically, you put small maggots into the wound, bandage it up, and remove the now-plump maggots a day or two later. They’ve eaten the dead tissue, while leaving the rest of the wound untouched.
If this sounds a little, er, unpleasant, then listen to what Donna Nordquist, a recent patient, had to say in the Wired article:
When it comes to the “ick factor,” the 63-year-old Nordquist is definitely a trooper. “If you know the difference between them being on a wound and coming out of a garbage can, it makes it a lot easier,” she said. And while she felt the maggots in her leg, she didn’t mind. “I knew they would wiggle and squiggle and move around. Let me tell you, you can go through a hell of a lot of pain if you can keep your leg.”
And she figures other patients will accept maggots, too. “They just haven’t hurt long enough. When they have, they’ll jump at it.”
Yet again, nature seems to have the solution to some of our problems. Neat, hey?