I remember hearing my father talk about the “good ol’ days” of the Great Depression, saying (among other things) that back then, it seemed as though boils were more common. He didn’t mean garden variety acne, either, because I pressed him on it. He meant big ugly painful boils, (or “malignant zits,” as I call them).
Granted that is strictly anecdotal evidence from one person. Is that plausible, though? If so, what accounts for the (relatively) un-commonness of boils, now?
Ah, I know this one. Boils are caused by staph germs, which can live all over your skin, and also in your clothes and sheets and towels and wash cloths and hankies. More general overall cleanliness means fewer staph germs.
I’d say we’re probably cleaner than we were 70 years ago. We wash hands more often, wash clothes more often (with newfangled automatic washing machines), there’s more general awareness of need for cleanliness (don’t pick nose, staph germs reside up your nose), we have throwaway kleenexes instead of poorly laundered hankies.
Also, I think there’s more awareness that it’s not normal to have pinkeye or boils all the time. We have higher standards of physical comfort.
And there are better antibiotics to fight staph infections when they do happen (especially opthalmic ointment for pinkeye), and we have better nutrition (a healthy diet helps your body’s defenses control its resident staph population).
I had a most excellent crash on my bicycle a few years ago(40+mph into a stray sheep) and had a dispute with the road surface - I managed to come out of it with lots of nasty abrasions but for months after that I kept getting boils, despite keeping everything as sterile and clean as possible.
I always wondered if I picked up some sort of infection , before the crash I never had any problems.
Actually those painful boils are the less serious manifestation of Staph A infection, when you get deeper wounds such as puncture injuries from say needlesticks it can be very dangerous and yet not be painful.
Unfortunately the widespread over-prescribing of anti-biotics plus not finishing the course of treatment fully has enabled stronger strains of Staph A to develop.
The result is MRSA or Methicillin Resistant Staph A is a real serious problem on medical units, I have seen whole units closed down when it has been discovered in hospitals.
One problem is that hygiene in hospitals has been taken far less seriously than it was in the 1930’s because of complacency.
You can have Staph & not get boils. A lot of people pick Staph up in the hospital though. I don’t think they are less common these days although the treatment options sure are better.
Just an idea, but wouldn’t the poor nutrition expected from living during a depression make all infections more likely, including boils?
I would also guess that this would result from unclean water. Poor people in rural areas used to get their drinking water from shallow wells or the creek. Bathing in contaminated water might produce more boils. My mother told me that she commonly got boils when she was a girl. This was in the 50s and 60s not during the depression, but she was the daughter of sharecroppers. Poor is poor no matter what time period.
I think it is very plausible that boils were more common among Americans during the Depression than they are now, although I am unaware of any data supporting this supposition.
Assuming it is true, I can’t tell you what accounts for the relatively lower prevalence of boils now.
Why some people get boils some times is just not all that clear. The best study of chronic furunculosis (recurrent boils) that I ever read was by some U.S. Army dermatologists working in VietNam during the war. Boils and other skin conditions were a serious problem for the army since they made servicemen unfit for duty. After a lot of study about all the dermatologists could conclude was that the grunts out in the field walking through rice paddies in their combat boots got a lot more boils than did the clerks, technicians and such working well behind the lines.
It seems that spending time in dirty, sweaty clothes makes one more prone to recurrent boils. I suspect that more people spent more time in dirty, sweaty clothes during the Depression than they do now. I suspect that the ubiquity of washing machines and air conditioning has a lot to do with making boils relatively scarce.
But other factors are involved in causing boils. Evidently, some strains of S. aureus are more likley to cause boils than others since boils occasionally occur in outbreaks among people who associate closely with one another. Here is an excellent article from the 80’s:
Sosin DM, Gunn RA, Ford WL, Skaggs JW. “An outbreak of furunculosis among high school athletes.” Am J Sports Med 1989 Nov-Dec;17(6):828-32.
“Furuncles (boils) are common among teenagers; however, few outbreaks have been documented. We investigated an outbreak of furuncles that occurred among male athletes of a Kentucky high school during the 1986 to 1987 school year. The overall attack rate was 25% (31/124). The risk of developing a furuncle increased two to three times in those who had skin injury. Athletes who sustained abrasions more than twice per week (P less than 0.01), who had a cut that required bandaging (P = 0.01), or had an unspecified injury causing a missed practice or game (P = 0.04) were at increased risk. The risk of developing furunculosis did not appear to be related to contact with formites, but rather, to contact with furuncles. Although athletes shared common areas (showers, locker rooms, practice areas, the attack rates for varsity football (36%) and varsity basketball (33%) were four times greater than for nonvarsity teams (P less than 0.01). Players who had a friend with a furuncle were more than twice as likely to also have had a furuncle (P less than 0.01). Exposure to furuncles appeared to increase the risk of furunculosis independently of reported skin injury. Control and prevention should, therefore, focus on both reducing skin injury and reducing exposure to furuncles, rather than attempting to sterilize inanimate objects.”
We now have antibiotics that we didn’t have during the depression that we can use to control outbreaks of particularly “bad” strains of S. aureus. This probably limits the size of outbreaks of boils and in that manner makes boils less common.
The most recent investigation of the epidemiology of boils that I could find was published in April of this year:
Landen MG, McCumber BJ, Asam ED, Egeland GM. “Outbreak of boils in an Alaskan village: a case-control study” West J Med 2000 Apr;172(4):235-9
“OBJECTIVE: To determine whether taking steam baths was associated with furunculosis and to evaluate possible risk factors for the occurrence of boils during a large outbreak in Alaska. DESIGN: A cohort study of village residents, a case-control study, and assessment of environmental cultures taken from steam baths.
SETTING: Village in southwestern Alaska
PARTICIPANTS: 1 adult member from 77 of the 92 households in the village was interviewed; 115 residents with at least one boil occurring between January 1 and December 12, 1996 were considered to be cases; 209 residents without a boil acted as the control group. All 459 village residents were included in the cohort study.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Rate of infection among all residents and residents who regularly took steam baths, risk factors for infection, and relative risk of infection.
RESULTS: 115 people (25%) had had at least one boil. Men were more likely to have had a boil than women (relative risk 1.5; 95% confidence interval 1.1 to 2.2). The highest rate of infection was among people ages 25-34 years (32/76; 42%). No children younger than 2 years had had boils. Boils were associated with using a steam bath (odds ratio 8.1; 3.3 to 20.1). Among those who used a steam bath, the likelihood of developing boils was reduced by routinely sitting on a towel while bathing, which women were more likely to do, and bathing with fewer than 8 people. Of the 93 samples taken from steam baths, one Staphylococcus aureus isolate was obtained from a bench in an outer dressing room.
CONCLUSION: Using a steam bath was associated with developing boils in this outbreak in a village in Alaska. People should be advised to sit on towels while using steam baths.”
I doubt, however, that any excess of boils during the Depression was due to more people sitting in steam baths without towels under their heinies.
A few years ago, I started having problems with irritable bowel syndrome. I also started having problems with boils on my butt. My doctor told me to use Neosporin on the ones I already had, and to use baby wipes or Tucks pads afterwards, and to use Imodium after an attack. Since then, I’ve been a lot cleaner, and I haven’t had problems since then.
Robin
There’s nothing worse than having a boil in between your butt cheeks during the summertime…
Don’t get boils mixed up with Furuncles. Boils are huge zits the size of your fist. Furuncles are much smaller, about the size of a quarter.
Boils: Size of fist.
Whatever.
Robin
Handy, a boil is a furuncle. A fist-sized boil with multiple openings discharging pus is called a carbuncle.
From Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary at Britannica.com:
“Main Entry: fu·run·cle
Pronunciation: 'fyur-”&[ng]-k&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin furunculus petty thief, boil, diminutive of furon-, furo ferret, thief, from fur
Date: 1676
: 2BOIL"
and
“Main Entry: 2boil
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, alteration of bile, from Old English byl; akin to Old High German pulla bladder
Date: 15th century
: a localized swelling and inflammation of the skin resulting from infection in a skin gland, having a hard central core, and forming pus”
Eeeewww…
What’s the difference between a boil and a large zit? I mean, I get large pimples on my chin whenever it’s that time of the month…(I have one now, I popped it and put neosporin on it…)
Anyone have pictures of a boil, just because I’d like to know what they are…
And btw, how did Dubya get one?
Why yes there is… Ever had a pilonidal cyst? Right in the crack of your butt? That isn’t the painful part. Go find a medical dictionary and look up a procedure called “marsupialization of a pilonidal cyst.” After cutting out a chunk of your butt (including the cyst), they don’t even stitch it up, they just leave the raw flesh exposed until the skin decides to cover it back up again (which takes weeks).
I am absolutely NOT going to go and look this up, but isn’t Leviticus quite horribly detailed on the subject of boils or whatevers?
Submitted for your perusal, a collection of skin boo-boos. The last one is a carbuncle. If a boil/furuncle is one inflamed area with one core, a carbuncle is a cluster of furnucles with multiple cores. The last photo looks to be about the size of a tangerine, with multiple heads:
Boils in the Bible.
It was one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt.
Moses lecturing the Israelites:
And then of course there’s Job. In the King James Version and the New American Standard 1995 Revision it’s “boils”. In the NIV it’s “painful sores”. Job 2:7-8
Leviticus is the book that details various sorts of skin diseases and prescribes how the priests decide “clean vs. unclean”.
Guin, I’m sorry but it’s too early in the morning for me to go looking for pictures of boils on the Web. :rolleyes: The spirit is willing but the stomach is weak. I did used to know a guy years ago who had one on the back of his hand. It was totally unlike a zit. It looked like the bottom half of a gumdrop (sliced through the Equator, not the Poles) with a hard crust/scab, resting on the top of his hand. Majorly eww. He had a girlfriend (not me) and she couldn’t hold hands with him on that hand.
Ah, now I see after Previewing that evidently Mjollnir has a stronger stomach than I do. But I’m not gonna click on the link, thanks…
Ugh…thanks. NOt as bad as I feared-I was simply curious, like if someone had never seen a zit before.
I heard a joke that Shrub’s famous boil was actually his “human makeup” starting to come off.
Shades of Men in Black.
Forgive me for deleting those verses; I haven’t been sufficiently caffeinated yet.
In Hebrew school, when we got the Torah portion we were supposed to read at our Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, the teacher took pity on the poor soul who drew the Leviticus portion on skin diseases. She advised the kid to draw on the Prophets portion for his commentary. The irony was, his father was a dermatologist.
Robin