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[RedKing]

Bah. When I was a kid, we used Mercurochrome.
Or if I had injured myself doing something stupid, I got Merthiolate. (because it burned like a motherf**ker, compared to mercurochrome)

Both of which are no longer used because they're a good way to get mercury poisoning. 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Hydrogen Peroxide isn't going to add tons of time to recovery, but it doesn't even really do what MSH says it does - bacteria have all those enzymes to break it apart, same as you. It does nothing but hurt a lot, at least in the concentrations we're talking about. You can jack up the concentration high enough to make it a disinfectant, but then it'll be causing serious damage to you, instead of just slowing down healing and encouraging scarring.

Well shit, it's even more useless than I thought, then. With the way people adhere to using it, I'm actually not very surprised at that.

[kisame12794]

I know a guy who accidentally stepped on a 6-inch spike. And by stepped, I mean landed on after jumping off his front steps. His parents filled a bucket with hydrogen peroxide, shoved his foot in, and squeezed the hole to suck the peroxide in, and flush the wound out.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I bet that ended well.

[kisame12794]

Oh yeah. Dude is fine. Granted, he's at least seventy years old, and he did it when he was a kid, so times have changed.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, I'll be honest, hydrogen peroxide probably didn't make that significantly worse, aside from pain. It was gonna take a while to heal and scar pretty bad no matter what they did.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It may not have made things worse, but I think it demonstrates the silly, panacea-esq attitude some people have towards a substance that is not very useful at all.

Seriously, did some pharmaceutical company tell people in the 20's that using hydrogen peroxide was the will of God or something? Because that's the only explanation I have for this.

[Bauglir]

Well, it provides a pretty good placebo. It bubbles and stings a lot, so you have clear signs that it's working and that it's probably not very good for anything swimming in it. And the placebo effect is an effect.

[GlyphGryph]

I've always found it significantly better than water about getting particulate crap out of dirty wounds.

[Flying Dice]

I've always found it significantly better than water about getting particulate crap out of dirty wounds.

This. I can't recall ever hearing someone talk about using it as disinfectant, it was always for washing out dirty cuts and scrapes before washing with water, using disinfectant, and maybe bandaging if it needed it.

[RedKing]

To be followed up with some Old Dr. Kaufmann’s Great Sulphur Bitters, no doubt!

[Skyrunner]

Anyone know how to go straight to the mobile youtube site, instead of being redirected to the desktop site first? Annoys me greatly.

[Bauglir]

Yeah, like I said, it is good at physically cleaning junk out of wounds. That may be another reason for the confusion, and I should've just said that. Didn't occur to me, for some reason. It's not the disinfectant it's treated as by a lot of people. That may well be a regional thing. American maybe?

[Hanslanda]

Yeah, like I said, it is good at physically cleaning junk out of wounds. That may be another reason for the confusion, and I should've just said that. Didn't occur to me, for some reason. It's not the disinfectant it's treated as by a lot of people. That may well be a regional thing. American maybe?

Perhaps. I've encountered this a whole lot also. People act like I'm a fucking idiot when I tell them that it isn't actually a disinfectant. Isopropyl alcohol is for disinfecting wounds, Hydrogen Peroxide is for cleaning the wound of dirt and glass and whatever you jammed in there while you were injuring yourself.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, like I said, it is good at physically cleaning junk out of wounds. That may be another reason for the confusion, and I should've just said that. Didn't occur to me, for some reason. It's not the disinfectant it's treated as by a lot of people. That may well be a regional thing. American maybe?

Perhaps. I've encountered this a whole lot also. People act like I'm a fucking idiot when I tell them that it isn't actually a disinfectant. Isopropyl alcohol is for disinfecting wounds, Hydrogen Peroxide is for cleaning the wound of dirt and glass and whatever you jammed in there while you were injuring yourself.

It's probably due to one of our old favorites: people do what they're told to without understanding why, and invent their own reasons later. I'm willing to be that most of the people who think Hydrogen Peroxide is a disinfectant grew up with parents who, when they were hurt, would slather it in that and rubbing alcohol, without actually explaining what either did. They just "know" that you clean wounds with Hydrogen Peroxide and rubbing alcohol, and (admittedly somewhat naturally) assume that both of them are working to disinfect. The idea has that sort of faux-rational common sense thinking written all over it.