Joan Wilen and Lydia Wilen
Joan Wilen and Lydia Wilen are folk-remedy experts and home tipsters based in New York City. They have spent decades collecting “cures from the cupboard” and are authors of several books, including Secret Food Cures.
Warts are embarrassing, and if you have one odds are that you want it off as soon as possible. Some warts are more concerning that others. genital warts are highly contagious and needing medical treatment to resolve. Common and plantar wars are less severe and wart removal home remedies provide a less expensive alternative to over-the-counter treatments and are less embarrassing than medical appointments. However, you should always feel comfortable talking to a medical practitioner about a health issue and if warts do not resolve for an extended period you should consult a dermatologist about them.
In the following excerpt from Secret Food Cures by Joan and Lydia Wilen discuss folk cures and wart removal home remedies.
No matter how you feel about warts, they seem to have a way of growing on you.
Verruca vulgaris is the medical term for the common wart. (Don’t you think a wart looks like a Verruca vulgaris?)
Warts usually appear on the hands, feet and face, and are believed to be caused by some type of virus.
The “quantity” award for home remedies goes to warts. We got a million of ’em—remedies, that is…not warts.
We tried to get warts for research purposes. We kept touching frogs. But it’s a fallacy. You do not get warts from touching frogs. (Incidentally, you do not get a prince from kissing them either.)
If you have a wart, there are a wide variety of remedies to try in order to find the one that works for you.
• Crush a fresh fig until it has a mushy consistency and put it on the wart for a half-hour each day. Continue doing that until the wart disappears.
• First thing each morning, dab some of your own spittle on the wart.
• Pick some dandelions. Break the stems and put the juice that oozes out of the stems directly on the wart—once in the morning and once in the evening, five days in a row.
• Apply a used tea bag to the wart for 15 minutes a day. Within a week to 10 days you should be wartless.
• Warts on the genitals? Gently rub the inside part of pineapple skin on the affected area. Repeat every morning and evening until the warts are gone or the pineapple’s gone.
NOTE: Genital warts are a serious sexually transmitted disease. They are highly contagious and should be treated by a medical professional as soon as possible.
• If you have warts on your body, you may have too much lime in your system. One way to neutralize the excess lime is to drink a cup of chamomile tea two or three times a day.
• Grate carrots and combine them with a teaspoon of olive oil. Put the mixture on the wart for a half-hour twice a day.
• Dab lemon juice on the wart with a cotton swab or cotton ball, immediately followed by a raw chopped onion. Do that twice a day for 15 minutes each time.
• Put a fresh slice of raw potato on the wart and keep it in place with a bandage. Leave it on overnight. Take it off in the morning. Then repeat the procedure again at night. If you don’t get rid of the wart in a week, replace the potato with a clove of garlic.
• Every morning, squish out the contents of a vitamin E capsule and rub it vigorously on the wart. This remedy is slow (it may take more than a month), but what’s the rush?
• Dab on (with a cotton swab or cotton ball) the healing juice of the aloe vera plant every day until the wart disappears.
• Every day, apply a poultice of blackstrap molasses and keep it on the wart as long as possible. You should also eat a tablespoon of molasses daily (be sure to rinse your mouth with water after eating molasses).
In about two weeks, the wart should drop off without leaving a trace.
• We heard about a young woman who used an old remedy. She applied regular white chalk to the wart every night. On the sixth night, the wart fell off.
• In the morning and in the evening, rub the wart with one of the following—a radish, juice of marigold, flowers, bacon rind, oil of cinnamon, wheat germ oil or a thick paste of buttermilk and baking soda.
• Boil eggs and save the water. As soon as the water is cool, soak your warted hand(s) for 10 minutes. Do this daily until the wart(s) disappear.
• If you don’t have the patience to tend to the wart on a daily basis, consider finding a competent, professional hypnotist. Warts may actually be hypnotized away.
• Plantar warts are the kind you find on the soles of the feet, usually in clusters. The wart starts as a little black dot. Don’t pick it—you’ll only make it spread. Instead, rub castor oil on it every night until it’s history.
• At bedtime, puncture one or two garlic pearles (soft gels) and squeeze out the oil onto the plantar warts. Massage the oil on the entire area for a few minutes. Put a clean white sock on each foot and leave it on while you sleep.
Do this every night for a week or two, until the little black roots come out and fall off.
