Bob Harrison wrote:
> Hello Steve and All,
> I think what made me less of a skeptic about the honey use for recluse
> spider bites was two things.
>
> 1. the honey was always gone when time to reapply.
>
> 2. On about the 3rd day my wife said (bite was on back) the volcano & 
> puss
> was starting to come back. We then went back to a generous amount of 
> honey
> on the site and then volcano and puss went away. healed in a week.
>

Two things:
1. I believe you when you say that the honey application helped clear up 
your necrotic lesion, but

2. I'm not so sure that you should be quite so quick to blame the lesion 
on a spider bite, unless you actually see the spider biting you (or feel 
the bite and actually see the associated spider or its corpse shortly 
afterwards).  There is a nice article at

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ednieuw/Spiders/Agelenidae/BennettVetterCFP.pdf

by a couple of Canadian entomologists explaining how people all over the 
world are convinced that necrotic lesions come from spider bites, even 
though the vast majority of the time they are caused by things like 
bacterial skin infections.  I've had some nasty sores that start as 
splinters or thorns that embedded in the skin and got infected, for 
example. There's apparently a lot of people in Canada who claim to have 
been bitten by brown recluse spiders, even though these spiders have 
never actually been found in Canada.

Basically, honey is good for clearing up infections, and necrotic skin 
lesions are usually caused by infections, so putting one on the other is 
just good sense.  Spider bites, on the other hand -- well, I am in 
Michigan, which I grant is not within the range of the brown recluse, 
but we have lots of spiders of comparable size that should be at least 
able to break the skin, even if they aren't that toxic.  I've never been 
bitten by a spider, and it sure isn't for lack of opportunity (I 
regularly poke, prod, and pick up large spiders that I find around the 
place).  I once asked over 200 people on an email mailing list if 
anybody had ever seen a spider actually in the act of biting them (or 
scurrying away from a bite), and exactly two could actually confirm a 
bite.  Both had been bitten on the hand while unstacking firewood, and 
both said the bite was minor, less serious than a wasp sting, and 
cleared up quickly with no wound. 

I think that spiders are getting a bad rap for very little cause, and we 
really shouldn't blame them for a bite unless it is a sure thing.

-- 
Tim Eisele
[log in to unmask]

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