Medical Uses
In a 1992 press release, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that no proof had been submitted showing the main ingredients in calamine (zinc carbonate and iron(III) oxide) to be safe for use or effective in treating bug bites, stings, and rashes from poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. The press release listed a total of 415 over the counter (OTC) drug ingredients which the FDA proposed banning for specific uses which are as yet unproven.
In a September 2, 2008 document, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended applying topical OTC skin protectants, such as calamine, to relieve the itch caused by poisonous plants such as poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac.
Read more about this topic: Calamine
Famous quotes containing the word medical:
“There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)