When I was in Boston about a half year ago (has it been that long???) for my husband's liver surgery, I apparently picked up HPV from the bathroom of our hotel room and developed a plantar wart on the bottom of my foot. I was swamped with work with no time to go to the doctor so a few weeks ago, when it started to get a bit uncomfortable, I looked into some home remedies I could give a go in the interim, until I could see a M.D. I first tried tea tree oil, by sticking a small piece of a cotton ball doused with the oil bandaged up against it overnight for about seven nights straight. It didn't seem to be doing anything at all so I started using aspirin about a week ago. I took a full strength aspirin tablet and crushed it. I then took a piece of one of my aloe plants and used the sappy aloe to pick up a bit of the aspirin powder. I put it on the wart, covering it with the mixture. I left it on for about 30 minutes and then washed it off with tea tree oil. I repeated this the next day and maybe the day after that (can't remember). I could tell it was doing something to the wart but it seemed very slow, barely noticeable change, so I decided to do this at night before bed, bandage it up, and leave it on overnight. (I didn't leave the aloe piece on there as some people recommend. It's just too cumbersome.) I did that a few nights in a row and by the 3rd day parts of the wart had turned black. I had read that this is the wart die-off reaction. The callous area of the wart has been reduced to almost nothing which I think is a good sign. Yesterday was the fifth day and it was actually a bit painful putting the aspirin mixture on and the area is somewhat painful today. Anyway, I expect this wart to go away at some point hopefully in the near future.
I consider aspirin a miracle plant-derived drug.
In doing my research on home remedies, I found a recommendation for milkweed sap. It has mixed reviews for plantar warts but I have read that it can be extremely effective on skin cancers, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma in particular, as well as on skin tags. I have one skin tag under my breast that I don't like so I am going to put the milkweed plants in our back yard to use soon for a little experiment. It will be interesting to see what happens. I just think that we don't use botanical-based medicine nearly enough in the U.S. and wonder if the compounds in milkweed could hold a cure for cancers. I will update this thread with information from my skin tag experiment