Yep, basic advice we need to eat more dirt. Especially when young. When you see your toddler licking the cat/dog it’s not necessarily a bad thing (i don’t know emotionally how the dog/cat feels, but for human health probably a good thing)
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And into another rabbit hole we go LOL.
Lots of natural science eventually gets looked at because it is so effective.
After WWI it was noticed that some soldiers survived wounds that should have had them feverish or dead…
Once investigated it seems that wounds that were exposed to the world for longer periods were the ones that did better and had less scarring.
Reason was flies. Actually the maggots. They consumed the dead skin and left the vibrant alone. Their secretions even helped prevent infection.
This had been known by many early cultures, but apparently kept getting lost in history.
So yucky as it sounds, having a few maggots on a nasty wound is not necessarily a bad thing.
How to convince some Mom as to why you want to put maggots on their child’s boo boo is the next hurdle.
Disclaimer: Before you go fly hunting next time you skin your knees, know that this is like any other cure and is only beneficial in specific cases. Even mother nature does not do One Size Fits All.
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Yes, I’ve had a few patients get therapeutic maggots. It’s basically a debridement. You don’t use it on fresh wounds only on non healing ulcer type wounds since maggots eat dead flesh, so the idea is they eat the dead flesh on the surface leaving live surface to heal (so called proud flesh)
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You know, I’m all in favor of pursuing alternative medicine in addition to traditional, (best of all worlds), but I got to say, maggots and leeches ain’t gonna fly. I know what they’re useful for…doesn’t matter. Ain’t gonna happen if I’m in a waking state.
You want debridement…that’s what Bandaids are for. (rrrrriiiiiiipppp!)
And now I have to go start preparing the Thanksgiving feast. I love this group. This actually feels very normal…my bro would always try to gross us gals out with photos of his surgeries at the dinner table. 
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I’m not talking the wound that would fit under a band-aid. These are like 6-8" wide deep wounds (sometimes down to bone). Acute wounds don’t normally need this, these are non-healing wounds (such as diabetic ulcers). As for leaches, they do use them for microvascular disease in digits (like toes and fingers). We also use leach-spit derivatives all the time (in cardiac cath procedures) as it is a powerful anticoagulant.
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When I would help on the local city ambulance service they’d get homeless street people who might not have taken their clothes off in a year. Their socks would be welded to their feet and ankles. Gangrene would set in and they’d finally end up at the hospital. Everything needed to be cut off and then the necrotic tissue scraped off. The staff knew when they hit live tissue when the pain hit.
Ain’t no band-aid option.
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Actually medical maggots were he.avily used in the Civil War and saved many lives. Before antibiotics that was the treatment of choice. How long before the Civil War I don’t know, but it was very much a predictor of how bad WW1 would be as a great many “innovations” in both military tactics and medicine first showed up there.
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Not surprised given how they feed. 
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Probably the reason for the “keeps getting lost” phrase.
I also find the etymology fascinating as turn of the 20th century, the terms traditional and alternative were the other way 'round. It’s also fascinating to me that despite the scientific approach to modern medicine, how much of it is full of Dr versions of old wives tales. Like why do we clamp the umbilical cord and cut it. There’s no medical reason for it. The policy was invented to reduce the amount of blood gotten on the bed sheets of richer people. Fact is, it’s healthier to let all the blood from the placenta be pushed to the child for the extra boost it gives them and then it’s also easier to push out a depleted placental sack than one that’s been clipped and is stuck full.
There are loads more but may be a tangential rabbit hole left alone…
What was the topic again?
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Some blah blah blah to do with lasers.
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Ahh, this is making me all nostalgic for the discussions we used to have while eating our lunches around the break room table back in my inpatient nursing days. 
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