Coal oil (kerosene) lit our great grandparents’ nights, and it fuels today’s jets. When I was a child it was also a miracle drug. Folks washed wounds with it and even took it internally—a good way to poison yourself!

Maybe its popularity came from the idea that the more evil-smelling and disgusting stuff was the better it was for you (think cod liver oil and creosote cough medicine). Rich people used to travel to spas like Eureka Springs to drink and soak in water that smelled like rotten eggs and tasted awful.

Despite its relatively mild aroma, coal oil’s curative powers were highly esteemed. There were other home remedies : tobacco juice relieved the welts of “wasper” stings, and lard poultices pulled poison from cuts and gashes. Coal oil was an antiseptic/healing balm.

My first encounter with the miracle cure came when I was four. Back then we boys went shoeless whenever temperatures permitted. They tell me that I literally ran wild, stubbing my toes on rocks, cutting my feet on broken glass, running thorns that had fallen from blue jays’ nests into my soles, and stepping on rusty nails.

One fall day, as I tore across the yard like a hellion, I ran through a gray mound of innocent-looking ashes. It contained live coals from a hog butchering the previous day. For those who don’t know where our food comes from, you can’t skin hogs. You scald them in a kettle of boiling water and scrape the hair off like shaving.

After my ill-advised shortcut through the bed of hot coals, my feet looked like I had a severe sunburn. I don’t remember any pain, but I vividly remember the smell when they soaked my feet in a tin bowl of coal oil.

I doubt the treatment did any good, but my elders were satisfied that they had applied the latest medicine.

“Hospital,” you say? No. Hospitals were where babies were born and where people went to die.

Coal oil was “snake oil.” But there is a petroleum product recommended by dermatologists to facilitate the healing of minor wounds: Petroleum jelly (Vaseline). Mine recommends it instead of antibiotic creams.