Dear All,
As the Editor of ALCA News 1990-2000 I was responsible for getting those
Epsom Salts letters published and no one did go ahead and do the trials I
suggested, at least to my knowledge. (BTW, there's a lot of other very
interesting stuff in old issues of ALCA  News, if the ALCA office still has
them to sell. IMHO, In the pre-internet days the News was much more uniquely
Australian than it has since become.) Anyway, a comment re this discussion.
I have used soaks and cabbage leaves personally and certainly they shift
fluid. The old practice of poulticing also worked on the same principles, I
think, and everyone in the pre-antibiotic days knew about helping a boil to
ripen by hot hyperosmolar mashes (bread and sugar, say) bound to the spot,
so the boil would burst sooner and be vented externally, relieving the pain
and perhaps reducing the likelihood of sepsis. (Yes, I'm that old, I
actually had a boil poulticed as a kid, and the I clearly remember that the
relief was wonderful.) Cabbage leaves I have used not only for sprains and
soft tissue injuries, but for what some call fibrocystic breasts: which were
often painful and lumpy pre-menstrually. Interestingly, in that situation I
did find with cabbage that drops of fluid pooled on the surface of the skin
above the largest cyst - which is exactly where I used to have recurrent
mastitis when breastfeeding, BTW, and which shows up with calcifications on
U/S. (That cyst was the one that gave me NON-lactational mastitis at an ILCA
conference in Phoenix: on returning home 10mls was aspirated under U/S.  So
it's a large one.) Other areas of the breast under cabbage just felt a bit
sweaty: like Jan (hi dearie) I think you wouldn't normally see any major
fluid losses, but it could still be significant.

One spectacular use of cabbage was when I fell while assessing hospitals in
Nigeria (no ice, compression, anything available immediately) which led to
bruising from mid thigh to below a knee so swollen that it could not bend by
next day. Then I saw a roadside stall with cabbage and got the UNICEF driver
to stop (thought I was nuts, of course). I wrapped cabbage around what I
could, and used a pair of stockings to hold them in place. The areas with
cabbage covering them softened and were yellow faster than those without,
which remained black for at least a day longer. So there's another anecdote
begging for a randomised controlled trial to test whether it works like that
for others....Outcome measure: rate of resolution measured by colour change.
Maybe bind in a distinctively-shaped piece of cabbage against one area of
the bruise.

Needless to say, I think these traditional remedies useful. I'm a great
believer in the common sense and wisdom of old wives across time and
cultures, and you'll find cabbage, poulticing, and so on in many different
cultures.


Maureen Minchin IBCLC
Author Breastfeeding Matters: what we need to know about infant feeding

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