Your skin can appear healthy when you are not. Its attention is directed outwards, and it is up to six weeks out of touch with events inside you because of the time its surface layer takes to grow. This remoteness makes it particularly easy for germs to take up unopposed residence in your skin whenever your immune system drops its guard.
Boils occur when your health is rallying again, as a means of banishing pus-forming germs which have taken these liberties during low periods of your life — colds, and other stresses such as menstrual periods often let them in. They may arise anywhere but most commonly appear around your face, neck and shoulders, or on your bottom and thighs. The most familiar condition is an almost continuous rash of numerous tiny dull red pimples, which rarely point and yield very little pus if they are squeezed. They are unsightly, but give little trouble.
Small boils like these that start in your skin commonly originate in Staphylococcus colonies lodged in your nostrils and ears, and Coliform bacteria from your bowel. They are always ready to take advantage of these conditions, which are very much to their liking. Fungus infections, especially Candida, may co-exist with these or occur separately. Anyone with chronically unhealthy skin, acne, eczema or impaired immunity can pick up one of these microbes and carry them on the body for months at a time.
Larger boils are less common but tend to occur in crops over a period of months. They may not originate in your skin at all but deep inside, from your bodies efforts to wall off and get rid of dead, inflammatory or infected material. These abscesses can migrate from their starting-points and surface under your skin. They may appear to be forming there, and doubtless some do. In either case your skin inflames and breaks open to let the abscess burst. A healthy body will sometimes in this way shed fragments of stitching and debris for several years after an operation or penetrating wound.
Some people have what seems to be naturally spotty skin, without germs. This may be due to the staphylococcus miasm, a disturbance of skin habit resulting from an infection with the germs perhaps years ago.
Crops of boils may begin during a cleansing diet or a period of improving health and be quite troublesome for months; they stop when their spring-cleaning effect is no longer required. Rather than be dismayed by their appearence, take encouragement from them. When they pass you will be vividly aware of the great improvement in your health they have helped to engineer.
What to do
1. Encourage a boil to burst by poulticing it twice daily with cotton wool or gauze soaked in hot water or Calendula lotion. Handle it with dry gauze, or in the bowl of a wooden spoon if the boil is on your face. Refresh the poultice frequently in the hot water, for up to five minutes.
Rinse briefly with cold water, then dress the boil with gauze and Magnesium Sulphate Paste, which dessicates the skin and \"draws’the boil more quickly. It runs easily at body temperature, so take precautions against leakage.
2. Start a cleansing diet, or persevere with the one that caused the boils.
3. A Vitamin C supplement and Comfrey tea or tablets (two with each meal) speed up your healing and may enable you to absorb inflammatory material rather than form abscesses.
Sometimes Zinc deficiency underlies a tendency to boils; try taking 15mg daily for a few months, preferably in food-state. Extend this to the full supplements for immunity if you suspect that your health is generally run down.
4. Homoeopathic Belladonna 12 helps early abscesses before they swell, if given frequently; Apis mel 3x is better for swelling. Merc sol 6 or Silica 6 are worth trying in more advanced cases. Consult a psionic medical practitioner if the problem is stubborn.
5. If you have repeated crops of small boils or pimples on your face, try massaging a little antiseptic cream (eg Naseptin) up each nostril three times daily. This will weaken and eventually wipe out any colonies of Staphylococci that you are carrying there, and the boils will stop.
We have found that prolonged generous supplements of Vitamin C (250mg food-state three times daily) or propolis (1-2gm twice daily) are also effective ways of eradicating colonies of germs that are hanging on in this way. They are both natural and safe antiseptics.
6. Antibiotic treatment is unwise and usually ineffective; your doctor is only likely to give it under pressure from you. He may however, by taking swabs, be able to identify reservoirs of Staphylococci, which can be reduced with suitable antiseptics. This is altogether more useful and safe.