Doctors are inclined to get very cross about patients who self-diagnose. Medicine is a very sacerdotal profession.
But how do you decide when you need to go & see the doctor? Doesn’t getting to that point involve a kind of diagnosis? A judgement on whether the problem is one you can deal with yourself?
I can still be quite shocked by how often children get taken to the doctor these days – don’t mothers know anything? Alternatively - however did we all manage to survive (as mothers or as children) without Calpol & antibiotics?
I was very good at falling over & still bear the scars on my legs to prove it. Wound infection was quite normal, the treatment hot water & Germolene, dressed with lint & zinc plaster OUCH.
The first use for hot water was to soak the old dressing until it was soft enough to pull off.
Sepsis control required a bowl of boiling water, some cotton wool balls & scissors or a pair of tweezers. Drop the cotton wool balls into the boiling water, squeeze out surplus water with the tweezers (so as not to scald the infant flesh) & gently wipe all the putrefaction away leaving the wound pink. If there is clear infection under the surrounding skin (which looks red if there is any), press hot pads over the affected area to draw the poison out. But if there is a thin red line beginning to stretch from the wound towards the heart, your child has blood poisoning & you must call for the doctor.
Not really different from applying pigeons to the feet.
