One evening recently I noticed a small, itchy red patch on one of my calves. Next morning there were lots of them … on both calves. Under a magnifying glass I could see blisters with small heads developing. I went straight to my doctor and was seen by a nurse … who, without bothering to examine me said it was a fungal infection and prescribed a cream. A went to a local Health Store fr advice and came out with a tube of Alliderm ointment … which worked like magic within a few hours, except for one place on my ankle … where a nasty inch wide sore developed. A week or so later I got talking to an elderly man who was in distress … he had a dozen or so nasty sores identical to the one on my ankle, from his wrist to his elbow. Alliderm is advertised as an effective treatment for MRSA skin infections. Its active ingredient is Allicin, which is extracted from garlic.
Reported.
Are you sure it wasn’t Smallpox?
How dd I get it? Well, a few days before one of the tenants in tbe household I live in (shared toilets), who has legs ulcers, stayed overnight in our local hospital. His legs were bandaged when he used the toilet there. I surmise that the staph (or it could be a strep) got onto his bandages then was transfered to the outside of the toilet bowl back where we live then onto my calves when I used the same toilet. Staph & Strep infections often spread rapidly where people use the same toilets. MRSA is now widespread in many populations. In their advertising the makers of Alliderm recommend that all doctors and nurses should carry a tube of it around with them.
From the Wikipedia link:
“Allicin has been studied for its potential to treat various kinds of multiple drug resistance bacterial infections, as well as viral and fungal infections in vitro, but as of 2016, the safety and efficacy of allicin to treat infections in people was unclear.”
I’d hesitate to draw conclusions about a skin reaction of unclear etiology that was magically cured in short order by application of this ointment. Was it actually an infection of some sort, or an allergic reaction, or what?
Garlic does seem to have some anti-microbial action, though it’s a long leap to conclude that it works for defined problems and should be routinely administered in humans.
*curiously, it was a given among mobsters that coating bullets with garlic caused serious and fatal infections in shooting victims. Shouldn’t it have had the reverse effect?
Garlic oil can harbour botulism if it isn’t made properly.
I’ve had MRSA, and this doesn’t sound like MRSA. MRSA sores hurt, they are not small, and they do not disappear within hours or overnight. They did not cluster as densely as a dozen between wrist and elbow. At most, I had two on my entire arm or leg at a time.
While it’s possible the tenant has MRSA and spread it via the toilet, I’m a little skeptical of that theory. If you got MRSA on your calves near your ankle, then it means the tenant contaminated the lower part of the toilet, near the bottom of the bowl and base. That’s not really a part of the toilet you come in contact with unless you’re trying to, and there’s no reason to put it there. The tenant’s bandage would have to have pus soaking through, and he would have to be trying to press his leg against that spot. As I said, MRSA sores are painful, and I don’t see why he’d intentionally cause himself pain to put his leg there for no reason.
This is why we need actual science to distinguish real data from anecdotes.
I’ve concluded that the rash on my calves (that developed into a sore with a honey-coloured textureless “skin” center at one site that I missed treating with the Alliderm) was Impetigo. Garlic oil from health stores that claim to contain Allicin contain only 1/100th of the amount of this active ingredient that Alliderm has in it. I’m convinced that if I hadn’t used the Alliderm and tried treating it with the anti-fungal ointment the nurse prescribed I’d have developed lots of sores … that could have spread to other parts of my body.
MRSA has many, many different clinical presentations. The only thing that ties them together is that they’re all caused by Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus. And that can only be determined by doing a bacterial culture and sensitivity test.
Now your standard skin infection from Community Acquired MRSA does tend towards boil/abscess formation and those can indeed be painful. But they won’t always be so.
And CA-MRSA is pretty ubiquitous in the environment right now. In a lot of areas of the US, over half the soft tissue and skin infections seen in local ERs and Clinics are CA-MRSA. We need not postulate that someone is going around dripping MRSA pus all over the place in order to explain infections.
Fortunately, most CA-MRSA specimens tend to still be sensitive to TMP/SMX or the tetracyclines or clindamycin. Hopefully that will continue. Hospital Acquired MRSA is more likely to be resistant to nearly everything, but fortunately HA-MRSA is still not seen that often in the community, and is rather more fragile a bug to boot, tending to need an immunosuppressed patient to get a real foothold.
My fear is that CA-MRSA and HA-MRSA will get together to produce a bug as virulent as CA-MRSA is and as resistant as HA-MRSA is. Then we’ll be hosed.
QtM, who still routinely pores over the monthly MRSA statistics gleaned from my patients. 
Thanks for the information, Qadgop. I believe mine was CA-MRSA. It’s fascinating that it can manifest so differently. I can only imagine what it’s like in a prison environment.
A couple of years ago my sister-in-law, who has a form of Porphyria for which she was being treated with an immune-suppressant drug, developed a Strep infection on her arm which destroyed major areas of skin. The staff treating her in hospital were apparently traumatised by her screaming with the pain she was experiencing. They managed to save her arm and she’s having ongoing skin grafts.
Antibacterial activity of a new, stable, aqueous extract of allicin against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. - NCBI
If I might ask, what medical training have you had?