the.com/poultice
medieval WebMD: mash some plants, slap it on, pray the infection blinks first.
means A soft, moist mass of heated material — often herbs, flour, or bread — spread on cloth and applied to the skin to ease pain, swelling, or infection.
from From Latin 'puls' (plural 'pultes'), meaning a thick porridge or mush of meal — the same word that gives us 'pulse' in the sense of beans and lentils boiled to a paste. Medieval Latin reshaped it into 'pultes/pulteis,' and the word arrived in English by the 16th century still tasting of that gloopy gruel: medicine you could practically eat, slapped on instead of swallowed.
- ancient tech
- used since Egyptian and Babylonian times
- bread option
- moldy bread poultices crudely foreshadowed penicillin
- draws out
- meant to pull infection toward the skin
- clay favorite
- bentonite clay still used for stings today
- word root
- from Latin puls, meaning thick porridge
mustard plaster — traditional heating poultice used since 1800s to treat chest congestion and muscle pain
clay poultice wound treatment — bentonite or kaolin clay applied to wounds and infections in folk medicine across africa and asia
bread milk poultice — medieval remedy mixing bread and warm milk applied to boils and abscesses in european medicine