Why strong tea is used as an emergency treatment for burns?
At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I’m going to mention that my mother used to put wet tea bags on our burns when my siblings and I were little. Since medical professionals are saying that they have never heard of this, I looked into it. The reason people do this is that the tannic acid in the tea is said to draw the heat from the burn. Tannic acid has been used as a treatment for burns for many years, as both a folk remedy and by doctors in the earlier part of the century. I don’t think I am qualified to go into what they do now, for fear of completely botching it, but I will say that they have different remedies for burns. I have heard another folk remedy, which is putting butter on burns to cool/soothe them, which I know is NOT a good idea. Don’t do the butter on burns thing. I think that if I had a mild burn, I’d rinse it in cool (not icy) water and put some ointment on it, maybe go to the doctor if I thought it was really serious or might get infected. After all, tannic acid i
