Usually when one of us gets a splinter we first try tweezers to pull it out, but usually it is far enough beneath the skin that it can not be reached with the tweezers, so we sterilize a needle and perform minor surgery, digging a hole into the skin and poking around until we can fish the foreign object out.

A few weeks ago when I ended up with a wood splinter in the palm of my hand the first thing I did was ignore it. I was busy and didn’t feel like dealing with it. It wasn’t painful and I remembered my husband saying, “wood will always work it’s way out.” The following day it was still there. It still wasn’t painful, but after my husband asked me a couple of times if I had gotten it out yet, I decided I better try.

Instead of the usual means I thought I would try something that I had only read about – honey. I have read that honey will draw a splinter out. Since I was busy that day and did not have time to sit around with honey on my hand, I decided it would have to be covered. I put a small dab of honey on a band aid and put it over the splinter. I then put on a latex glove so I could go about my tasks without losing the band aid. Within a half hour I began feeling pain in the area of the splinter. It wasn’t severe pain, but when something touched that area of my hand it felt like, I don’t know, I guess it felt like there was a splinter in it.

After about an hour, when I removed the glove, the band aid wanted to come off too. I lifted one end and saw the area was now red and weeping a bit. The honey was apparently doing something. I took that band aid off and put another dab of honey on a second band aid and covered the area again. It was difficult to keep the band aid in place on the palm of my hand, and after about another hour that one, too, was ready to come off. The area was still red, and as I pressed on the area where the splinter had gone into my hand clear liquid came out along with the whole splinter.

Out of habit I thought I better clean the wound with hydrogen peroxide to prevent infection. Interestingly when I poured the peroxide over the area it ran off like water. There was absolutely no bubbling. I knew that honey was said to be antibacterial, and I believed that it was, but up until that time I had no proof. The redness gradually went away and my hand healed nicely.

Please don’t ask me how or why this works, I can only testify that it worked for me. 🙂