The People's Pharmacy® with Joe and Terry Graedon

When I was a child both hands were covered with warts. Many home remedies were tried. One worked completely: For two weeks, each night at bedtime, rub hands thoroughly with castor oil and tie a sock on each hand.

Years ago, my aunt, a nurse, broke open the stalk of a milkweed plant and smeared some of the white goo on my wart. The wart soon disappeared and never returned.

I had a wart on my thumb when I was little, and a lady told me to pee on a penny and rub the penny on the wart. I did, and it went away.

I was told by my grandmother to rub warts with potato skins, or place potato skins on them. I put a piece of potato skin on the warts with a Band Aid, and it worked on all of them.

I have just read the website of an aromatherapist. She states that warts are caused by a virus (as is also stated on your website), and that they are an external sign of an internal potassium deficiency. I thought, after reading about the comments of your readers regarding their experiences with treating warts, that a possible common factor in their treatments is potassium (potatoes, milkweed, urine [perhaps the body's own potassium]. Thanks for your show and website.

Viral warts will resolve on their own over time... but it can take a long time! This complicates our ability to determine effective strategies for managing warts (did it resolve because of the potato goo, or on its own?). One thing's for sure... we should find a fancy name for the potato process, like "ablative potato therapy," or "Solanum tuberosum Linnaeus ablation." Perhaps then doctors could bill for it! (Joking of course--but I'm sure someone would.)

I have warts on both my eyelids and the bottoms of my eyes. It's horrifying. This is day one of the potato remedy. Dr. wants to slice warts open and "hope" it works! I'm sooo desperate!

Thanks for tips!

When I was about 8 years old my brother and I both had warts on our hands. Our Aunt asked us if she could buy them from us. We agreed and she gave us a quarter for each wart. A week later they were gone and never returned.

I told this remedy to a doctor that I work with. Her daughter had several warts that had been burned off, then cut off and still grew back. She did not want to go back to the doctor, because the treatments were painful. So they decided to try the potato remedy even though they were both doubting that it would work. She sliced a white potato into wafer-thin pieces, then placed it on the warts and covered with a dressing. She left it on overnight for one week. The only thing that they did not do was to bury the potato. After one week the warts were gone, and that was almost one year ago. They have not come back since. I think they are believers now.

I have an old medical text book with about 30 volumes in it. It's about 100 years old and the preventative medicine section prescribes this potato remedy (which I first heard about myself 30 years ago from my Great Grandmother).

The only difference is that the medical text book doesn't require hiding the potato, burying it or anything like that. Just rubbing the raw potato on the wart, pimple etc.

When I was young I had warts on my hands and fingers. My grandmother rubbed the warts with potato skins and then buried the skins. All the warts went away.