The Healing Power of Maggots!

Phyllis Hulme's family and friends were aghast when she told them doctors planned to put maggots on her leg ulcer. "I got some horrified looks. I think they thought: she's old, she doesn't know any better, she's gone a bit gaga," said the 81-year-old, who suffers from diabetes. "But it's been marvelous. I used to feel like screaming sometimes, the pain was so bad, and the first night they were on the pain went."

It may sound gruesome, but it turns out that maggots are remarkably efficient at cleaning up infected wounds by eating dead tissue and killing off bacteria that could block the healing process. Maggot medicine, in fact, has a long history. Napoleon's battle surgeon wrote of the healing powers of maggots 200 years ago, and they were put to work during the American Civil War and in the trenches in World War One. With the arrival of modern antibiotics in the 1940s, however, maggots were consigned to the medical dustbin. Now a new generation of physicians, keen to cut back on antibiotic use, is waking up to the creatures' charms. Some believe maggots are one of the most effective ways of treating wounds infected by the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

So far, most patients have been enthusiastic -- once they are reassured that the sterilized greenfly larvae will not start burrowing into healthy flesh. "These maggots are only interested in dead and unhealthy tissue. Rather than strip a leg, they will start eating each other instead," Raynor said.

from Maggots... Coming to a Hospital Near You