When being in the fifth class of the school I went to I had to tackle
another health problem, viz., that of boils (furuncles). It was a
very unpleasant phenomenon.
Insofar as I understand it, a boil is a suppuration under one's skin
or therein. At first, the skin turns red in the area of the
suppuration, and a tender lump develops. After several days or a
week, the lump starts turning white because pus collects under the
skin.
If one does nothing with his boil, in the end it usually bursts
itself, the pus oozes out, and everything heals up by itself. But
this process is rather long (a week or two weeks) and quite painful,
the pain increasing until the very breakthrough of the pus, when a
relief takes place at once.
I passed through such a process once or twice, a boil being located
on my loins or buttocks. However, boils started appearing on my
face. At that point my patience ended up. I did a small surgical
intervention. As I was a great book fan, I knew something about
sterility and disinfection. That is why I took a vial of triple eau
de Cologne, available at home, damped a piece of cotton wool
therewith, and applied the eau de Cologne to the boil, the skin around it, and my
fingers. Then I dipped an ordinary sewing needle into the vial with
eau de Cologne and pierced the boil with the needle. Thereafter I
compressed the boil by my fingers and squeezed the pus out. Finally,
I cauterized the hole in the boil by the same eau de Cologne in
pressing the vial neck thereto, turning it bottom up, and keeping it
in such a position for several minutes. Then I applied a sticking-plaster to the ex-boil place. This surgical intervention
turned out to be a great success.
Thereafter I began to cope with other boils rather easily. I even
stopped waiting for the appearance of a pus-filled boil to carry out
my surgical intervention, but did so when only the first symptoms of
the ailment emerged. In so doing, I had to squeeze out some blood of
abnormal colour, rather than pus. The more blood I succeeded in
squeezing out, the better the result was.
Most often a single mini-surgical intervention was enough for a boil
to disappear. But sometimes there were cases when a new boil emerged
near a healed old one soon after such an intervention. I explained
it by pyogenic substance not being squeezed out well enough when
carrying out such an operation. I neutralized an arisen new boil in
the same manner as the first one. Sometimes I had to perform several
punctures by needle, rather than a single one, to better squeeze out
the morbific substance. Also, sometimes I did a small cut by razor
blade, rather than a puncture by needle, toward this end.
In any case, at that time I succeeded in coping with approximately
two dozens of boils. The battle with the boils lasted for about half
a year or a year. Afterwards the boils disappeared. And they have
not reappeared until now when I am in my sixty-seventh year.
I ought to confess that I do not believe in the infectious nature of
this disease. I perfectly remember that there had been no scratches
or abrasions through which an infection could penetrate in the places
on my face where the boils appeared. Moreover, in the case when a
boil reappeared after my mini-surgical intervention it did arise on
the skin portion undamaged by my tool, rather than on that damaged by
it. Furthermore, from the viewpoint of an infection through the
skin, a sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance of this
disease seems to be strange. As a matter of fact, if an infection
through a damaged skin in the form of scratches or abrasions had
given rise to the disease, then the latter would have reappeared
during my life, which has not changed regarding prevention of such
damages. Everything testifies to the fact that the source of those
boils was an internal morbific substance, of which my organism strove
to get rid. As soon as that substance was removed from the organism,
boils did not appear any more, in spite of scratches and abrasions.
