Healing after procedures (general context)

After a cut, a tooth or a birth, the tradition did what was at hand: a clean dressing, rest, warm food, and from outside an ointment or compress of herbs that 'draw together' and 'heal' — pot marigold, yarrow, plantain. Much used to go into the wound itself; today's tradition stops at the edge of the dressing.

The catalogue lists six native species: pot marigold, both plantains, yarrow, English lavender and lemon balm. The list arose as the intersection of the skin and bruises topics, i.e. herbs the catalogue lists under both — marigold ointment and a yarrow compress are household classics, not surgery.

A wound after a procedure heals by rules the surgeon sets and which are documented: cleanliness, rest, the right dressing, no bathing, nothing smeared into the wound. A herbal ointment belongs first on a healed scar, and only after agreeing it with whoever stitched the wound — not on the sutures.

For marigold there are small studies on skin healing, for the other species tradition. The documented influences on healing are dull and large: not smoking, eating enough protein, keeping diabetes under control, sleeping. No compress makes up for those three when they are missing.

Redness spreading from the wound, warmth, throbbing pain that intensifies after the third day, pus or odour and fever are infection — a doctor the same day, not a compress. A wound that opens, or bleeding that ten minutes of pressure does not stop, belongs in emergency care.

Swelling and pain in the calf after surgery can be a thrombosis, and breathlessness on top of it means calling emergency services. Numbness or pallor of the limb under a dressing means loosening the dressing and calling. Anyone on blood thinners or with diabetes checks any ointment for a wound beforehand.