From Theo Rances, London, UK
Leah Crane reports work on using salamander mucus to help heal wounds (15 June, p 19). This reminded me of the time my father gashed himself while working on a motorbike engine. As someone whose pharmacy training was interrupted by a spell as ground crew in the air force, he knew a remedy used in the 1920s, and dispatched me to find a large slug. This he squeezed to make it exude the slime that he found to be healing for the wound.
I have never found the need to repeat this treatment on myself. I am surprised that Harvard Medical School has discovered the same phenomenon in Chinese salamanders.
