If you look up Bates' Salve on the internet you find that it is one of the rarest materials in the universe.
What was Bates' Salve (I may have the apostrophe wrong, forgive me)? It was a warm to hot poultice applied to a wound presumably to prevent infection back in those days when there were not all that many things available. It had a wonderful smell; a reassuring smell. What did it smell like?
Well, if you go into a chicken shed as the chickens are receiving their bran and pollen you have perhaps one component of the Bates smell. If you go into a kitchen after bread has been freshly baked that is another component. However, there is yet another component which I did not know about when I was young but was the reason for Bates' salve becoming rarer than the finest diamond. It was its lead content.
The pharmaceutical powers decided that something containing so much lead could not be out in the community. Who knows how much lead it contained? If you know let me know. It was not pure lead or anything near that. Perhaps it was 2.5% lead. There was a sweetness in the smell which could have come from the formation of lead acetate, sometimes used by vignerons in the past - or perhaps even now - to sweeten their vintages.
I had Bates'salve applied to me on hundreds of occasions when I was a child. It always worked possibly because (a) there was no infection to kill; (b) just the smell of it lulled the organisms into a lethal sleep; (c) I knew it was going to work so it did work.
Then there were many years when I no longer smelled Bates'salve but the memroy of that odour remained with me. When I would smell fresh bread I would think of the salve. Some of the finest French cooking smells like the salve. I have thought ot the Salve in Bayreuth during a performance of Parsifal (so good for weeping wounds): I have thought of the Salve during a performance of Strauss's four last songs at the Barbican.
On night I was in Wagga Wagga having a few wines with friends. A neighbour of theirs came around who had been a pharmacist and somehow I got onto the subject of Bates' salve. To my astonishment she said she still had a stick of the salve at home, just a few metres away.
She went home, brought it back and we heated it in the traditional way. And there was that odour. Ah well, Proust can have his Madeleines. I have my Bates' salve. No, I don't have it myself but I know that, a few hundred Km down the road, there is perhaps the last stick of it in this hemisphere.
In writing this I have added to the almost nil information about Bates' salve on the net and somehow I shall keep the Salve and its smell alive. When Google assembles its odour register I will submit the Salve so that people all aroudn the world can savour it on-line.
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My Dad and Grandparents still have sevreal sticks of this stuff. I can rememeber I had a deep cut on my hand when young. My nanna got some of this stuff she just dripped it on my hand it sealed the wound and it healed very fast.
ReplyDeleteI"m also looking for a list of ingredients etc but cannot seem to find anything.
When also seeking this stuff for a grandson with a thistle in his foot I came across a reference to 22 parts per cent-um Lead oxide. The relief I saw in my kids growing up makes this still a valuable addition to the bathroom cupboard.
ReplyDeleteMum used to use this all the time on us in Broome. I was devestated when the last lot was used in my early 20's. Imagine my relief when cleaning out and elderly aunts house on finding a complete stick. Here is to 20 more years of Bates' salve. The one thing I hate it the third degree burns LOL/
ReplyDeleteI still have half of one stick in my first aid kits. It was given to me by my grandmother back in the early 50s. I have used it on so many occasions I cannot tell you. My gran assured me it was so powerful it could draw a nail out of a piece of wood. I look forward to using this wondrous balm for years to come. And the smell, wonderful and it evokes warm memories of a bygone era...things were so simple back then.
ReplyDeleteMY MUM (born 1926) PRONOUNCES THIS "BATES'ES SARVE". ...(POSH FAMILY)
ReplyDeleteThis is how I remember it being pronounced 😊 Amazing drawing on glass & splinters etc. I wonder if this is an earlier recipe of todays controversial Black Salve.
DeleteMy mother (b. 1913 in Sydney) used this for EVERY ill that befell any of her five children. She used to heat it over a candle and drip the melted salve onto a piece of white rag (who had gauze??), stick the rag on to the offending part, and then secure the bandage. Despite our longing for a more "modern" treatment the good old Bate's Salve never failed to cure the ailment, be it boils, tics, chest colds, cuts, infections, and on and on. I was born in 1953 and I never met anyone who had ever heard of the stuff. Sure wish I had some now, if only to enjoy that smell from so long ago.
ReplyDeleteI was born in 1950 and spent my early years on my Grandparents' market garden in Derbyshire (England). My Grandmother told me its original use was to treat mastitis in pigs and cattle but all wounds - animal and human - seemed to benefit from being treated with it. I, too, have tried for many years to find it with no success - closest is some drawing ointment in a tin but it doesn't work as well.
ReplyDeleteI too grew up in the 1950's in Australia and well remember Bates' Salve, not the least because of the fear of hot melted waxy material being dropped onto a very sore infection.
ReplyDeleteI looked up Trove and found the reference below to an article in "The Adelaide Advertiser" of 1912 which details the origins of Bates' Salve.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5330777
The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931)
Saturday 31 August 1912
BATES' SALVE.
There is quite a romance concerning the history of "Bates' Salve," which, although
the product of an Adelaide man's inge- nuity, is now known all over the world because of its value in curing cuts, bites,
bruises, burns, whitlows, chilblains, sore
lips, inflamed eyes, corns, rheumatism, warts, and many other ills.
My mum only has about an inch left of a stick and it works wonders and fast to drawer out infection with out leaving a scar too! Can we get anymore from anywhere? The knew black ointment we can buy these days from the chemist isn't as near as good!
ReplyDeleteMy husband has a splinter down the side of his finger nail, and I dragged somewhere out of the depths of my grey matter "I had better get the Bates salve!" Alas, of course, we don't have any, but I remember growing up in Sydney in the 1940s and 1950s having my mum heating it and dripping it on my wounds. "Drawing ointment" we called it.
ReplyDeleteI just used some of the last 1 cm of my precious Bate's Salve stick on my Mum's sore toe. She asked me to google it to see if we can buy any more. Alas, I can't find it for sale but enjoyed reading your blog. I was born in the 50's and we used it often. I have used it for my children for infections over the years. My Mum bought a few sticks when her local chemist closed down 20 years ago. best cure ever for infections and splinters.
ReplyDeleteWhere can I purchase about 10 sticks !
ReplyDeleteBack in the early 50's (1950 to 1960) my parents used to use it on any boils I got. It was heated to boiling point, dripped onto a cloth and then applied to the boil whilst burning hot. I would scream and cry and beg them not to do it, but was ignored. What they did was tantamount to child abuse and today they would not get away with it. There were other treatments on the market even in those days but a lot of people believed that treatment had to hurt to be effective. My parents were ignorant, uneducated and superstitious and I still hate them to this day for this and other treatments they used on me. Yet despite their stupid beliefs they held down jobs and also had private health care (which was cheaper in those days) and could have easily taken me to a doctor or hospital but they thought they knew best. I know other people in this era did the same to their children. As I said if this happened today I would have been removed from them and put into care. They caused me so much pain with their ignorance that it is hard to remember any pleasurable things I did with them. To put a burning poultice on a young child is unimaginable today. I still hate them.
ReplyDeleteYou would not have been taken off your parents -_- i know kids who have ACTUALLY been abused ( getring beaten, sleeping on the floor, no food) and still werebt taken off the parents
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