Every first aid kit, in the estimation of one cooperating doctor, should contain a small bottle of castor oil, some Band-Aids, a castor oil pack and the willingness to fast. He did not explain how that willingness would be packed with the rest of the items, but he did tell me why he was strongly in favor of including all four.
It seems that he went out into the relative wilderness with his wife, who shortly developed a severe bout of nausea and vomiting. His examination led him to diagnose her condition as coming from overeating and the change in living conditions, from a “virus,” or from a cleansing resulting from a period of meditation in which she felt especially close to the Indians who had lived in that area. It looked like things were in a bad way, since he had not brought any medications along with him, and they were miles from a pharmacy. Then he remembered his castor oil pack. This was applied with tenderness and compassion, and there was certainly a degree of healing in that attitude. The willingness to fast was already in hand (You should have seen her look at any food offered her), and her recovery was on the way. She stopped vomiting and in 24 hours was fired up and ready to go again.
Then her physician husband used his fingers to test a heating element to see if it was on or off. His fingers were slower than the heating element in transmitting the message, and the pads of his right middle and index fingers were burned. He had that little bottle of castor oil handy, however. The fingers were doused in the castor oil immediately, and after an hour Band-Aids, also wet with castor oil, were applied to both fingers. The pain subsided almost at once. He confided that he put fingernail pressure on the nerve centers (which I determined were also acupuncture points) of his hand and wrist just proximal to the burned fingers. The next morning his fingers showed no real sign of the burns, although blisters had already started to form and the seared tissue where his fingers had touched the hot element was obvious.
So, with this story in hand, I determined that I would also include these four little items in my first aid kit every time I departed from close contact with civilization.
[† March, 1977, Volume 12, No. 2, page 85, Copyright © 1977 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation, Virginia Beach, VA.]
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