5823. Treatment of the Nails

5823.    Treatment of the Nails. The nails should be kept clean by the daily use of the nail-brush and soap and water. After wiping the hands, but while they are still soft from the action of the water, gently push back the skin which is apt to grow over the nails, which will not only keep them neatly rounded, but will prevent the skin cracking around their roots (hang-nails), and becoming sore. The points of the nails should be pared at least once a week; biting them should be avoided.

5824. To Remove Warts

5824.     To Remove Warts. A daily application of either of the three following remedies is effective in dispersing warts: Touch the wart with a little nitrate of silver (lunar caustic); or with nitric acid or aromatic vinegar. The lunar caustic produces a black, and the nitric acid a yellow stain, which passes off in a short time; the vinegar scarcely discolors the skin. Sparks of frictional electricity, repeated daily, by applying the warts to the conductor of an electrical machine, have been also successfully employed as a cure for these troublesome and unsightly excrescences.

5825. Wart or Corn Powder

5825.    Wart or Corn Powder. Ivy-leaves dried and ground to fine powder. A popular and useful remedy for warts and soft corns. The part having been moistened with strong vinegar, a pinch of the powder is sprinkled on it, and then bound on with a strip of rag. This is sometimes called cosmetic vegetable caustic. A mixture of equal parts of savine and verdigris also make an efficacious wart powder.

5826. To Remove Moles

5826.    To Remove Moles. Croton oil, under the form of pomade or ointment, and potassio-tartrate of antimony (tartar emetic), under the form of paste or plaster, have each recently been successfully employed for the removal of ordinary moles and birth-marks.

The following is the mode of using the latter adopted by an eminent French surgeon: Take tartar emetic in impalpable powder, 15 grains; soap plaster, 1 drachm; and beat them to a paste. Apply this paste to nearly a line in thickness (not more), and cover the whole with strips of gummed paper. In 4 or 5 days eruption or suppuration will set in, and, in a few days after, leave, in place of the birthmark, only a very slight scar. Croton oil ointment effects the same, but less completely unless repeated, by producing a pustular eruption, which, however, does not permanently mark the skin. (See No. 5762 (To Remove Pitting and Old Pock-Marks).)

5827. Ingrowing Toe Nails

5827.     Ingrowing Toe Nails. This most painful of the diseases of the nails is caused by the improper manner of cutting the nail (generally of the great toe), and then wearing a short, badly-made shoe. The nail beginning to grow too long, and rather wide at the corners, is trimmed around the corner, which gives temporary relief. But it then begins to grow wider in the side where it was cut off; and, as the shoe presses the flesh against the corner, the nail cuts more and more into the raw flesh, which becomes excessively tender and irritable. If this state continue long the toe becomes more and more painful and ulcerated, and proud-flesh sprouts up from the sorest points. "Walking greatly increases the suffering, till positive rest becomes indispensable.