[Herbalist] bruise salve

[Tara Boroson]

>
>
>*blink* I missed something here.... Alcohol is a very good preservative,
>well known for killing 'buggies'. Mixtures of either vinegar or alcohol in
>sufficient quantities with oil are quite well known for NOT going bad...
>

Alcohol and vinegar are each pretty good preservatives, but neither are
fabulous.  This is more true the further you dilute them.  Alcohol does
a good job killing bugs on contact, but it's not perfect.  If you
introduce a population of bacteria to a solution, some of them will be
resistant.  They'll survive and possibly breed (especially in balms such
as this, which are chock full of food.)  Thus, a bottle of rubbing
alcohol can easily become contaminated.  This has been a problem with
the alcohol gel hand washing solutions.  The CDC (I think it was them)
recently announced that alcohol hand washes shouldn't replace a good
soap and water scrubbing in hospitals.  That is also why alcohol swabs
for medical use come in single-use packs.

As for vinegar, it's toxic because of it's pH.  If you dilute it with a
higher pH solution, you raise it's pH and reduce it's effectiveness.
 Even un-diluted, it doesn't kill everything.  Plenty of bugs are well
evolved for very low pH conditions - i.e. every critter that survives
our GI tract.  The pH of our stomachs is far lower than that of vinegar.
 So, like alcohol, it helps but it's not a perfect solution.  That's why
you should keep your pickles in the fridge after opening them.  They'll
keep indefinately as long as bacteria aren't introduced, but it's so
easy to introduce bacteria once they're opened.  The double-whammy of
vinegar and cold increase your chances of them keeping for a long time.

>Does anyone have any good tips for additives to solid (beeswax) balms?
>Some of the ones I have made have developed dark/grey spots in them, which
>probably means they are spoiled. But I'm not sure what to add to keep this
>from happening, and I can't give away the stuff until I'm sure I can
>stabilize it!
>
I wish... I've even had trouble with commercially produced products -
specifically, Burt's Bees moisturizer.  A jar of it went moldy on me a
few weeks ago.  And, I don't think we can rack that up to little bits of
unincorporated organic matter since it was commercially homogenized.

-Magdalena