Contemporary History of the Escharotic Black Salve

narrated by Clark Bigham to Dr. Michael Tierra

---

It was some 28 years ago, that my son was diagnosed with glomurulonephritis. Since conventional western medicine has nothing to offer by the way of treatment for this condition except palliative treatment with cortical steroids, I was looking for any other viable alternative that was available. It was during that time, in the middle of Wyoming that a friend told me about a cowboy named Howard McCreary. He said that Howard had a mysterious black salve that could be used either externally or internally to treat and cure a wide variety of problems and that it could be possibly effective for my son's glomurulonephritis.

Howard was literally a cowboy, having won numerous awards in rodeos throughout the country including Madison Square Garden in New York. He received two silver buckles and was world champion for two years in a row. At the time that I met him, he weighed around 275 pounds, mostly muscle. It seemed that Howard's father passed down a secret anti-cancer formula in the form of a paste comprised of Sanguinaria, commonly known as "bloodroot", Galangal, Zinc Chloride and distilled water. Through a dream, Howard further developed a modification of this formula, including a proprietary method of preparation that increased its efficaciousness not only for cancer but a broad spectrum of other diseases, simple and acute, as well as chronic.

I spent the better part an entire day speaking with Howard about my son and the various uses for which he had successfully employed the salve. He had an album of photographs showing the many successfully treatments he had accumulated over the years. The pictures were very similar to those found in Dr. Moh's book, Chemosurgery (publ. by Charles C. Thomas, 1978). Throughout all of this, he was very open and gracious with me in every way, bought me lunch, inviting me to stay overnight. Upon leaving, he gave me a half-pint of the salve to bring home. Because this was all given freely with no hooks attached, I was rightly predisposed to trust and believe him.

Among the many wondrous uses of this seemingly miraculous salve, Howard told of using it as an eyewash, diluted one part to a thousand parts water. One way he had to determine whether anyone was with him or 'agin em' was to ask them to put it in their eyes. This I did, putting a drop in each eye. At first it stung for about 30 seconds and caused my eye to become mildly irritated. Within a short while, however, the mild irritating condition completely cleared up leaving my vision clearer and brighter than before. You might consider this my initiation to it.

As a result of Howard's eyewash trial I have personally recommended it to a number of people with glaucoma and macular degeneration. It seems to be highly effective for one type of glaucoma and in about five cases of macular degeneration it proved to be 100% effective.

My wife used the salve topically on a mole. It also became characteristically inflamed with considerable discomfort and pain. Generally it takes about 8 hours for the area over which the salve is applied to blow up with the characteristic inflammation and whitening on the surface of the skin. From anywhere from 7 to 11 days, the core (eschar) would drop off, leaving a shallow hollow core in the skin. Rarely would this be accompanied with bleeding and never with infection. This would be kept clean with an antiseptic solution such as hydrogen peroxide and covered. Usually this healed within a month with barely a scar. The fresh skin that healed over it was tender, like a new baby skin. In the case of my wife's mole, it was completely eliminated. I have never found the salve to damage unaffected tissues. Since my wife had a hair mole, when the tissue healed over, the hair came back. This attests to the fact that the salve didn't even disturb the underlying hair follicle.

After over 28 years experience in using the Black Salve it is my belief that applied topically or taken internally, it has a propensity to seek out problems in the body. It is not a universal panacea for all ills but at least offers a window of opportunity for the individual to make other changes that may be necessary for lasting healing to occur.

Despite all of this, influenced by the negative opinions of the doctor's who were overseeing the care of my son, I remained reluctant to give it to him. For the next two years my son was in and out of the hospital almost weekly. Finally, out of desperation, I decided to give him the salve internally. It was interesting because after taking the salve my son did not go into the hospital again for over six months. Without any recent checkup, and based only on prior history, the doctors decided that it was time for my son to have a kidney transplant. We trusted the doctors and we stopped giving the salve to my son because of the fear that it would stimulate the immune system and result in his body rejecting the transplanted kidney.

In fact, despite the fact that my son had not been taking the salve for some time, he rejected the transplant and a subsequent second transplant later. Later, however, when my son developed peritonitis, I gave him the salve to take internally and it worked very well.

I learned from the cowboy that the salve generally works very well with all infections perhaps with the exception of gastrointestinal ulcers for which it can be irritating. I gave the salve to one person with colitis and told him that it may cause a temporary aggravation. This it did for about three or four days, after which the colitis was completely cleared up with no recurrence.

This same man, however, told me that while he had no further colitis symptoms, his ankle developed an unusual pain. I asked him if he ever had an injury to his ankle. He said that when he was much younger, he jumped off the end of a bridge and broke his ankle. I asked if it was the same foot. He said "yes." "Was it the same place?" "Yes." About a week later he called me again and "yep, the ankle seems fine now."

VIPONT CHEMICAL PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY

Vipont Pharmaceutical Company, located in Fort Collins, Colorado was formed over 30 years ago by the cowboy and a friend specifically to research and develop the salve and eventually get it approved by the FDA. Vipont had a very sophisticated laboratory and had raised between one and one and a half million dollars to fund their research. I was with them for three years as chairman of the board.

At first I got involved with them with the prospect of making money off of the salve. Eventually, after seeing all the good it was doing and could do for so many people with otherwise incurable diseases such as cancer, I put in over $500,000 of my personal money.

At that time the FDA may not have been as rigid as they are today and the salve was classified "IND" meaning "Investigational New Drug." 'Officially' its first intended purpose was for the treatment of periodontal disease for which it had been extensively used on animals in veterinary practice. Of course, it was also used extensively and successfully on animals for various types of cancer. While our primary aim was to have the salve approved for the treatment of cancer in humans, at one point we realized that we needed more money to continue our research and to go through the complicated and expensive approval process. As a result we petitioned for its use for periodontal disease. Because of this, when we later requested approval for cancer, the FDA argued that it was not possible to have a drug approved for such widely diverse usage as periodontal disease and cancer and they shut us down.

At one point we sent a sample to be tested at the Mayo clinic. I still have the letter from the investigating researcher stating that the black salve exhibited highly active anticancer properties in vitro.

Eventually Vipont was bought out by Viadent (a division of Colgate) and was put into their toothpaste. Because however, Viadent chose to use it as an extracted ingredient, leave out the galangal, claiming that it had no therapeutic value in the formulation, instead of in its pure whole form, it never worked as well as it did previously. To this day, I will make the Black Salve toothpaste, adding about a 5% ratio to Tom's toothpaste, not other commercial brands, and give it to friends and acquaintances. It is highly efficacious with even casual brushing in clearing up periodontal disease.

Since the Black Salve is taken internally, Vipont had its LD50 toxicity tested. It turns out to be quite safe with an LD50 of 700 mg. per kilogram of body weight. The recommended daily internal dose for a person is only around 150 to 250 mg. once daily. This is well within the safe, non-toxic range. In fact I had a man who misunderstood my instructions and took one teaspoon a day for three days. He said, he felt nothing but sleight mild gastric discomfort.

In general for internal use, I recommend that it not be taken on an empty stomach and that the salve be put into a small gelatin capsule with gelatin.

While the ingredients in the salve are simple, consisting of zinc chloride, powdered sanguinaria and galangal and distilled water, the sequence and conditions of how these are put together is also important. In general, we have found that the Black Salve does not work as well when a lot of things are added to it. It may also be that the preparation lessens and alters the caustic principle of the zinc chloride.

I have given it to numerous people for a wide variety of problems ranging from moles, skin cancers, other cancers, influenza, colds, eyes problems, gastrointestinal inflammations, skin diseases including psoriasis and other conditions too numerous to list. My inclination, since the Black Salve seems to seek out diseased areas of the body, is to try it for just about any known condition. More often than not, I have been astounded with the results.

Cosmetically, I have added a 5 to 10% solution to a cream (not moisturizing) to be put directly on fingernails. This seems to make them grow stronger and faster. At one time I added a 15 to 20% solution to shampoos and hair conditioners and the result was that it stopped dandruff and other scalp diseases and brought life back into the hair, making it grow fuller and more lustrous. I have never used it to stimulate hair growth. Now I only use a 5% solution for the scalp for fear that it may unintentionally remove a cherished mole.

Regarding claims of others that the Black Salve is dangerous or the Naturopath in Arizona who reports applying to a breast carcinoma and having it erode the carotid artery, requiring drastic medical intervention, I have never seen any serious negative effect in over 28 years of use. I have personally found that while other formulas advocate up to 50% zinc chloride, the version that I use and that was extensively tested by Vipont Chemical Company only uses about a third and this seems enough to produce its therapeutic effects.