A couple of my African-American patients have told me that their
mothers/grandmothers (in the American South)put sulphur on a piece of burnt
cotton and touched that to the cord stump, and that the stump would fall off
all clean and dry and un-yucky.

I wonder if the cord has always been one of those aspects of infant care
that people have always felt the need to "do something" about. It's
certainly an odd-enough looking thing, and I know that in some cultures
people carried their stump with them throughout life as an amulet. I
remember as a kid, when my sister's (baby # 3) cord fell off, my mother just
absent-mindedly set it on the windowsill over the kitchen sink, and there it
sat for years! No wonder I have a reverence for all things to do with
birth - the thing probably put the fear of god into me!

Cathy Bargar