To Sew A Toe

Back at the beginning of March 2008 I posted about a blister remedy I had come across in a book from 1848:

'Blisters:
On the feet, occasioned by walking, are cured by drawing a needle full of worsted through them; clip it off at both ends and leave it till the skin peels off.’

I was rather sceptical.

Mr. Sloman commented at the time that he thought that there was something in the advice given, as the thread would act as a wick, but at the time I didn’t think that sewing a piece of thread through a blister was something that I would be trying.

Of course, opinions can change, particularly when someone has acted as a guinea pig.

The guinea pig was Vic (the one who goes to great lengths to help me out when I find myself in urgent need of something in the middle of a long walk and who occasionally pops up on this blog). When she suddenly found herself inflicted with a number of blisters after a wet day on her Grand Union Canal walk last year, she thought the thread method to be worth a try, and found that her blisters dried out astoundingly quickly.

So, after the fourth day of the piffling blister on my little toe reforming during the TGOC, I decided that drastic action was needed. My needle and a length of thread were thoroughly wiped down with a pre-injection swab, and through both layers of my double-decker of a blister I sewed the thread. At this point Mick, who had been wandering around the vicinity of the tent taking photos, returned and snapped a quick photo of the work in progress:

I then trimmed the ends off the thread.

The following night I removed the thread and sewed another piece through, in the other direction.

It was still a couple of days before I was pain free, and who knows, maybe it would have got better by itself by then anyway, but I wouldn’t write off repeating the experiment in future (hopefully not for a very long time though – as I said at the time, I’m not accustomed to getting blisters and I don’t want to start getting accustomed to them).