Now, maggot therapy has received a boost from the medical establishment that could make it easier for patients and doctors to get insurance reimbursement for this treatment, which was noticed as effective against war wounds by Napoleon's surgeon general as well as by orthopedic surgeon Dr. William S. Baer during WWI, among others.



Just in case you wondered.

Maggot Therapy

 

though I don't have direct experience with it, I have read of soldiers and hikers who when wounded, deliberately do not remove the maggots as they will only eat dead tissue and not healthy tissue thereby staving off infection.

 

I saw this on TV, it was disgusting and fascinating. They laid a bag of maggots on an infected leg. The maggots went to town and wiped out the infection, leaving the "healthy" tissue behind for doctors to start working on.

 

It is my hope that I can avoid this therapy all my life.

I'm fairly certain I would , if not

 

^Agreed.

 

Hey, before synthetic heparin they used to use leaches to impede clotting fators.

 

They're using leeches again. I've read articles about both leech and maggot therapy in debridement and to reduce infections:

Leech Therapy

 

What goes around comes around. Is blood letting next?

 

Funny, when I posted this, I was thinking leeches, not maggots.....both are kind of icky, though.

 

The funny thing in the TV show was that the maggots were pharmaceutical quality and have a code like other medecines for billing purposes.