The all important thing is to watch for is a red streak moving away from the wound. Get to the doctor that day. You have blood poisioning making it’s way through your system. Ma had some nasty yellow brown stuff that sprayed on and bubbled on the wound. It hurt the worst of anything ever used on me. It ate away infection though. Has any kid not put a nail through their foot? I jumped down about 5 feet onto a 6 inch nail jumbing out of a corn crib we played tag in.
Is there another product that looks exactly like it? Because it was orangy-red stuff and it stung like hell.
Mercurochrome is the orange/red non-stingy stuff. Iodine is the stuff that burns like hell. Mercurochrome’s big selling point was that it didn’t sting.
:eek: Maybe it hurt because mom was poking around on a gaping wound with that little plastic stick with the pointy nub on it!
Merthiolate was the one my mom used that stung like hell. I also prefered mercurochrome.
I think your Mom and mine went to the same momming school. We hardly ever saw the inside of an emergency room (and it wasn’t from lack of injuries) and ours all healed fine with no infections too.
Speaking of cleaning wounds, I gave myself a good cut with an old scythe once, out where we didn’t have running water or any means of cleaning the wound. I bled it really good, and cleaned it up once we found a bathroom, and got no infection at all. I didn’t expect to; I’m not the infecting kind.
Was that orangey/red? Maybe that’s what I was getting.
I am sorry to hear you were so bedeviled by a hangnail. It is amazing how painful such a thing can be.
Hubby used to get those routinely. As soon as any evidence of a pocket of pus would appear, I would sterilize a needle, lance the pus pocket, clean out all the pus and trim any dead skin and bandage it up. Finger cots help to keep it clean, but the key is checking every day or even more often to make sure it is clean. Sometimes the pocket would develop when there was not all that much redness or swelling. The quicker I could catch them, the faster they would heal. I learned after a while to inspect his fingernails and toenails regularly. The first few times he wanted me not to lance it, but eventually the infection got bad enough that even he thought lancing was a good idea. They never did start to heal until after being lanced that I saw.
My mom used Betadine - that was orangey/red - and I didn’t get painted kitties. She just told us to suck it up. 
The TV ad says “The doctor told me to bring her right in” but the radio one said “My mommy took me to the emergency room”. Certainly fever or red lines in the direction of the heart would be cause for concern, but I can’t imagine a doc telling the mom to bring the kid in for what they showed on the commercial.
My Pop was a good one for pulling out splinters. I swear he got a gleam in his eye when he got the chance to poke around in a finger.
My cousin (about 11 years old) went to the ER for a large (about 6 inch) splinter in his thigh. The wound was smallish, about a half inch across. The doc removed one quite narrow but long splinter and then berated his mother for wasting their time.
The wound got worse and her pediatrician said the redness and swelling were part of healing and as long as there were no red streaks going away from the wound to stop bothering him about it. Two days later it started to ooze green pus. When you pressed on one end, the other rose, like a see-saw. My aunt dug at the wound and out came the other, larger splinter and pus ran out with it. It eventually healed.
When I was growing up (late 50’s/early 60’s), the only time that you went to the Doctor was for shots. Typhoid, diptheria, polio, etc.
Some of my more memorable injuries:
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Fell off of bike, then slid under Mom’s Rambler station wagon. Cut knee to the bone on radiator blade.
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Was trying to swing waaayyyy back on a swing set. As I was going back. the front legs pulled out of the ground. I landed on my back, and watched the top support bar fall towards me, hitting me on the head and knocking me out.
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Riding bikes with my friends, along a really deep construction ditch. Man in front rides bike over side. Rest of gang follows suit, with the last guy (me) landing on the very top. Multiple abrasions, sprains, and general bloodiness.
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Trying to jump my old Schwinn cruiser off of a homemade ramp, Evel-Kneivel-style, while holding the neighbor’s cat in one arm. Bike damaged beyond repair. Still waiting for cat to come back.
As some of the other posters have pointed out, things like that back then were considered to be accidents, not emergencies.
And if there was enough light to still be able to see, you had to stay outside.
Those are memorable, all right (and funny).