Mary Rose Swetley, age 10, of Gary, Indiana, for her question:
How do you prevent and cure warts?
Warts seem to be era ra fond of children. They seem to arrive from nowhere and usually their beady little buttons grow on the fingers. They may squat there for a few weeks, sometimes itching and smarting. Then they may suddenly decide to fade away. However, sometimes a wart is so stubborn that only a doctor can remove it permanently.
When your grandparents were children, the grown ups told them that warts are caused by toads. This seemed logical because the skin of a toad is covered with warty burps. In those days, almost everybody thought that you catch warts when you hold a warty toed in your bare hands. They forgot to explain one thing. Some children who have never even seen a toad manage to get warts.
Nowadays, we can not promise that staying away from toads will prevent warts. This may or may not help. What we do know is that warts are caused by certain virus germs that burrow under the outer layer of the skin. We may touch these viruses on many surfaces, bu.': most warts are spread from person to person. A wart is most likely to be infectious when the bumpy lump is torn or if the flesh around it is irritated and inflamed. A mere touch can spread the virus to the skin of another person. An angry warn of '`his kind should be covered with a bandage.
Nobody can promise a sure way to prevent warts. But medical experts really know how to cure the ugly little bumps for good and all. They are not rated as major diseases. Very often they are painless or merely itch and smart a little. If this is all, you may try an anti wart salve from the drugstore.
These non prescription medications often work on mild cases. If you follow the directions to the letter, the nasty little nodules soon start to shrink and finally disappear. But, sad to say, some warts are too stubborn to budge or they keep coming back. This is no time for drugstore remedies. The patient should take this more serious warty problem to a doctor, without delay.
The doctor surveys the scene and decides which treatment suits the case. He may recommend a stronger salve than the drugstore remedy. He may use X rays, an electric needle, dry ice or some other method to destroy the virus and shrink the bumps. These treatments may soLTnd painful, but none of them hurt. And when a doctor does the job, you can be sure that those pesky warts have departed permanently.
Doctors regard a wart as a benigh growth called a verruca. The skin, as we know, is a series of layers. The verruca virus never digs down to the deep sensitive skin layer. It stays in the tough surface layer. There it orders the cells to build folds o€ corny material and stack them in a hard button. When the virus dies, the warty wad of folded skin dries up and falls away leaving the skin as it was before.