North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran and Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Hi all,
    While we're on this subject of stings and bites, and hopefully taking
notes....
    Plantain leaves contain proteolytic enzymes and are analgesic.  They can
be used on any kinds of bites or stings, but I tend to use meat tenderizer
or an extractor on stings, I'd forgotton that little gadget till TFB
mentioned it.  Plantain leaves are the ONLY thing besides ice that I know
that will work on caterpillar stings.  The famous ones here in TN are the
saddlebacks, locally known as "Packsaddles" and famous for getting you in
the corn patch.  They also like willow trees, and there are a lot of other
stinging caterpillars in the woods.  Most of them make very handsome moths
and butterflies, I only mind them when I have a row of painful holes in my
hide.  Plantain grows in every garden and every gravel driveway in America I
expect, so it's worth learning.  Since it's edible, I chew up a leaf and
spit it on the sting.  Stops the pain quick, unless it's a %$^#@*  "puss
moth" caterpillar, which I don't ever want to be stung by again.  After the
2 hours of hand pain and then the arm and shoulder spasms, I stopped the
headache with niacinamide (B3), and then took niacinamide day every 3 hours
for 2 days, when I quit, the inflammation was gone.
    Any kind of shocker device will work on stings or brown recluse bites.
I met a fellow who owns a nursery in McMinnville who bought a shocker back
when they first came out, before the FDA clamped down on them.  He said the
company was still in business, but you had to mention that you wanted for
your DOGS.  I'd be surprised if the FDA hasn't shut down that use too by
now.   Anyway, his gadget had electrodes 1/2" apart he said, and you did 4-5
shocks around the bite or sting.  They used for everything at the nursery,
wasps, bees, caterpillar stings.  One employee hadn't told them she was
allergic, and didn't have a kit, so when she got stung, she began screaming
that they'd have to take her to the emergency room.  They shocked the bite
before they left, and the reaction stopped.
    I have been bitten 3X by brown recluse spiders, my husband got bitten
once, and we know or have heard of a bunch of other people who've been
bitten, and the only horror story out of the whole lot was the woman who
didn't do anything, went out of town and THEN her arm swelled up.  By the
time she got back 5 days later and went to get electrostim on it, she had an
area of dead skin on her arm 4" long and 1 1/2" wide.  The electrostim
stopped it so it didn't eat down to the bone, she has an ugly scar but it
could have been so much worse!  She has a coworker who turned up with a bite
recently, a purple place the size of a quarter that started developing a
hole in the middle, got two electrostim tx's and a week later there wasn't a
mark left.  (One tx would probably have been enough.)  We've used electric
fence, TENS units, A Beck Box and an electro-acupuncture device, all of them
seem to work, and usually one tx did it.  The PT  and the chiropractors I
know who do this stuff seem to have 100% success with it.  This includes the
fellow who was coming in for therapy for something and told the PT that he
had this brown recluse bite that was eating a hole in him.  The doctors said
there was nothing they could do but cut it out, but this was in a place
where felt he didn't have anything to spare....   So the PT showed him how
to use her portable machine and sent him to the restroom with it.  It solved
his problem.      Donna