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He was one of my earliest heroes. The movie "The Right Stuff" was released in 1983, when I was 12 years old. The movie and Yeager's autobiography, "Yeager,

He was one of my earliest heroes. The movie "The Right Stuff" was released in 1983, when I was 12 years old. The movie and Yeager's autobiography, "Yeager, and Autobiography" were frequently consumed during my teenage years. I often watch the right stuff right up to that moment that the focus shifts away from Yeager. I learned plenty from Yeager's story and his accomplishments. I admired how he became a pilot in WWII, as a "Flying Sergeant", how he worked to break the sound barrier, and how he sought combat commands in Korea and Vietnam. Today, I am reminded of one minor anecdote that had a big impact. In the book, Yeager describes the treatment he used to avoid permanent burn damage from his F-104 accident in 1963. During college I crashed on my mountain bike and suffered road rash on the left side of my face. The ER doctor advised me that I should expect permanent scars. Remember Yeager's treatment for his face, I used the same (an alternating application of Vaseline and Hydrogen Peroxide). The treatment left me with no scars, just as it left Yeager with no scars. The lesson for me is that we can learn valuable knowledge in unexpected places, but we have to seek it out. Having heroes, respected authors, interesting subjects, and/or a focus of curiosity is a great way to learn and become inspired. Chuck Yeager met many of these for me, from 1983 when I first found him, to recent years enjoying his Twitter feed. He was a larger than life legend who encouraged me to be more daring, and saved me from permanent scars. Godspeed General Yeager

com2kid 6y ago
> I used the same (an alternating application of Vaseline and Hydrogen Peroxide). The treatment left me with no scars, just as it left Yeager with no scars. There is 0 references to this treatment methodology online, do you mind explaining further? (I was shocked google books didn't even pull an excerpt!)
- sswaner 6y ago
  That is a good question that the parent comment has prompted me to consider. As mentioned above, I have attributed the specifics to the Yeager biography for many years, but incorrectly. My treatment was to apply Vaseline to my wounds to keep them soft, then 2-3 times per day to scrub the wound with a gauze pad soaked in hydrogen peroxide. It was very painful, but resulted in none of the predicted scars. Similar to Yaeger's treatment, but different in the specifics (as further review pointed out to me). I am not a doctor, please don't follow any medical advice I share. As for the 0 references, I found 1 (or .5, it only mentions Hydrogen Peroxide): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23561480/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23561480/ In addition, I found the following: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5752/can-burn-scars-be-avoided-by-repeated-scraping https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5752/can-burn-s... http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=37867 http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=37867
  - voldacar 6y ago
    This is super fascinating - I was always told that cleaning wounds with H2O2 could if anything, make the scars worse.
hisnameisjimmy 6y ago
I also need more detail/info on this treatment.
say__what__now 6y ago
Just grepped through the book and found the incident you mentioned, but there's nothing about Vaseline and hydrogen peroxide. Are you sure you didn't read about this in a different book? If so, any idea where? So, it was several days before I realized how bad things really were. My face was swollen to the size of a pumpkin, badly charred from being blowtorched. Ol' Stan Bear came in and sat down. He said, "Well, Chuck, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that your lungs have not been permanently damaged from inhaling flame and smoke, and your eye looks normal. The bad news is I'm gonna have to hurt you like you've never hurt before in your life to keep you from being permanently disfigured. And I'm gonna have to do it every four days." I stayed in the hospital a month, and every four days, Doc started from the middle of my face and neck, scraping away the accumulated scab. It was a new technique developed to avoid horrible crisscross scars as the skin grew beneath the scabs. And it worked beautifully. I have only a few scars on my neck, but my face healed perfectly smooth. The pain, though, was worse than any I have ever known.
- vga805 6y ago
  i love comments like this, another daily reminder why i love this site
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Hey, they had that in Game of Thrones!
- sswaner 6y ago
  Wow, this is cool. I must have read about this somewhere else, but attributed it to the book. I last read the book in the late 80's, and now I am really curious what other memories have shifted in my head over the years. As an adjacent comment mentions - this is why I love HN. Thanks for fact checking me and giving me a whole new list of things to ponder.
jacobolus 6y ago
Be careful with hydrogen peroxide though. In researching it, I found a bunch of papers describing how hydrogen peroxide will permeate many different human tissues and then kill a wide variety of human cells, some of which don’t regenerate. For example, chondrocytes, the cells that produce/maintain cartilage. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=peroxide+apoptosis https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=peroxide+apoptosis Scared me off from using hydrogen peroxide as a wart treatment, even though it was having promising effects.

com2kid 6y ago

> I used the same (an alternating application of Vaseline and Hydrogen Peroxide). The treatment left me with no scars, just as it left Yeager with no scars. There is 0 references to this treatment methodology online, do you mind explaining further? (I was shocked google books didn't even pull an excerpt!)

sswaner 6y ago
That is a good question that the parent comment has prompted me to consider. As mentioned above, I have attributed the specifics to the Yeager biography for many years, but incorrectly. My treatment was to apply Vaseline to my wounds to keep them soft, then 2-3 times per day to scrub the wound with a gauze pad soaked in hydrogen peroxide. It was very painful, but resulted in none of the predicted scars. Similar to Yaeger's treatment, but different in the specifics (as further review pointed out to me). I am not a doctor, please don't follow any medical advice I share. As for the 0 references, I found 1 (or .5, it only mentions Hydrogen Peroxide): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23561480/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23561480/ In addition, I found the following: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5752/can-burn-scars-be-avoided-by-repeated-scraping https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5752/can-burn-s... http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=37867 http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=37867
- voldacar 6y ago
  This is super fascinating - I was always told that cleaning wounds with H2O2 could if anything, make the scars worse.

hisnameisjimmy 6y ago

I also need more detail/info on this treatment.

say__what__now 6y ago

Just grepped through the book and found the incident you mentioned, but there's nothing about Vaseline and hydrogen peroxide. Are you sure you didn't read about this in a different book? If so, any idea where? So, it was several days before I realized how bad things really were. My face was swollen to the size of a pumpkin, badly charred from being blowtorched. Ol' Stan Bear came in and sat down. He said, "Well, Chuck, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that your lungs have not been permanently damaged from inhaling flame and smoke, and your eye looks normal. The bad news is I'm gonna have to hurt you like you've never hurt before in your life to keep you from being permanently disfigured. And I'm gonna have to do it every four days." I stayed in the hospital a month, and every four days, Doc started from the middle of my face and neck, scraping away the accumulated scab. It was a new technique developed to avoid horrible crisscross scars as the skin grew beneath the scabs. And it worked beautifully. I have only a few scars on my neck, but my face healed perfectly smooth. The pain, though, was worse than any I have ever known.

vga805 6y ago
i love comments like this, another daily reminder why i love this site
ncmncm 6y ago
Hey, they had that in Game of Thrones!
sswaner 6y ago
Wow, this is cool. I must have read about this somewhere else, but attributed it to the book. I last read the book in the late 80's, and now I am really curious what other memories have shifted in my head over the years. As an adjacent comment mentions - this is why I love HN. Thanks for fact checking me and giving me a whole new list of things to ponder.

jacobolus 6y ago

Be careful with hydrogen peroxide though. In researching it, I found a bunch of papers describing how hydrogen peroxide will permeate many different human tissues and then kill a wide variety of human cells, some of which don’t regenerate. For example, chondrocytes, the cells that produce/maintain cartilage. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=peroxide+apoptosis https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=peroxide+apoptosis Scared me off from using hydrogen peroxide as a wart treatment, even though it was having promising effects.