I am sure we all rejoice with & for our good comrade Bill in his triumphant use of honey as a wound dressing. The very impressive results, especially the minimising of scar formation, are in conformity with a huge body of prior evidence. Any liquid honey will serve well. (The even better efficacy of manuka honey is real, and this stuff should be spread thru the world of medicine; but any liquid honey is fine.) Why then has this knowledge not been smoothly incorporated into routine medicine? My inference is (1) Modern medicine is largely oriented to synthetic pharmaceuticals. 'Folk remedies' are greatly handicapped in achievement of 'cred' in this context. (2) The search for 'active ingredients' in honey, which could then be synthesised, patented, etc, has found very little success. R >My six weeks visit to the Doctor and to my Occupational Therapist turns out >to be my last. For those who may not know, I had an operation on my hand >and got permission to treat the wounds with honey five days after the >operation and before the stitches were removed. - Robt Mann consultant ecologist P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949