When I was six years old I built the greatest fort you could imagine.
There was a huge bush that was hallow underneath. I crawled under it and cleared out the dead branches and swept the dead leaves into piles to be used as seats. I played in there for a whole week until... I woke one morning and about half my body was covered in a rash. The doctor diagnosed it as poison oak.
The rash continued to spread until my eyes swelled shut and there literally was not a place you could touch with a sharp pencil, that wasn't covered with the rash.
After this experience I became extremely alergic to poison oak.
I got poison oak one time by just driving across the mountains with the car windows open. (True story)
When I was about 12 years old(1966), it seemed like I had a permanent case of poison oak. Off to the doctor I went.
Dr. Johnson was an old man and had been my doctor all my life. He perscribed a treatment to create an immunity.
The perscription was a thick dark brown liquid. I was supposed to put one drop in a glass of milk and drink it each day for a month. Then the dosage was increased to two drops for a month. The final dosage was three drops and was supposed to continue for a year.
After six months I quit taking the drops. I wish I had continued, maybe I would have been totally immune.
After the treatment I did not get poison oak unless I came in direct contact with it. Even then if I was able to take a hot shower or swim in the ocean my reaction was minimized.
The treatment, which Dr. Johnson perscribed was poison oak oil. Now days this treatment is seen as quack medicine.
30 some years ago, I worked with a man that would start eating one poison oak leaf per day, starting in July. He would do this in preparation for his August hunting trips. He claimed his reaction to poison oak was minimized by the daily doses of the toxin.
So is it quack medicine? I can't say. I can only tell you that I have personal first hand experience that testifies to the fact that the poison oak oil treatment delivered me from extreme sensitivity to almost immunity.
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