I was in Family Practice for over 15 years, and EVERYONE who came to the office with a mysterious skin lesion or a few number of lesions said, “Doc, I got a spider bite.”
This is on a par with “Only a rusty nail causes tetanus” and “mice eat cheese” as myths.
There was a legal case in TN where a hospital patient woke up with a funny mark on her skin, saw 1 or more spiders in the room, sued and WON against the hospital for permitting a spider to bite her–without any evidence.
A link to the Staff Report: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspiderbites.html
Welcome, hfheller. Good to hear from a physician. “Junk Science” is a curse.
Hey Doc,
A couple weeks ago I got what I thought to be an insect bite on my arm. I assumed it was a spider bite because the swelled area spread out quite a bit, about 3 inches in diameter, and unlike the usual mosquito bites, didn’t go away in a day or two. After at least 3 days of no improvement, and the area being all swollen and hot and red, I asked a couple of friends for advice.
The RN said - put ice on it because you don’t want the venom to spread. You might want to get it lanced.
The retired Special Forces guy with a few semester hours of first aid training said - run hot water over it, as hot as you can stand it, for as long as you can stand it, at least 30 seconds or so. The heat causes the protein of the venom to break down and speeds up the healing process. All venom types are proteins and so heat treatment breaks it down and speeds up healing.
Well, I went with the RN’s advice first, and after a day there was still no improvement. Then I tried the heat treatment - and there was a noticeable improvement within an hour. There continued to be noticeable and rapid improvement after every heat treatment. I’m a very slow healer so I was pretty impressed by the heat treatment.
I’m NOT asking if I had a spider bite … I’m guessing, actually, that it may have simply been a mosquito bite that I itched with a dirty fingernail. My question is, why did the heat treatment work? Is that true about heat breaking venom? Is heat treatment a common treatment for anything?