11 FEBRUARY 1995, Page 30

Nature knows best

Sir: About this maggots/wounds business.

When I was in the soldiers' ward of Manor Hospital, Walsall, in 1944, another inmate, bullet wounds in his upper arm and suffering from plaster-cast itch, dug away with his forefinger and extracted a maggot. Horrified, he rushed to the ward sister.

She calmed him down, `That's perfectly all right,' she said, 'maggots only live on rotten meat. They'll have your wound cleaned up in no time.'

Interestingly, he was having a penicillin injection every four hours — extremely expensive stuff at that time — and had clocked up 32 of them.

I never discovered which healing agent got the credit.

William Hewison

5 Southdown Drive, Wimbledon, London SW20