AlleyGator wrote:

> My daughter is in her mid-teens, and has tears in her eyes because she
> has an earache, which I don't even remember her ever having as alittle
> kid. She's almost never sick, so she doesn't handle this stuff well.
> Since the doctors are all closed, a friend who is a nurse-practitioner
> gave us a 3-day regimen of some antibiotic and the wife went to
> Walgreens to get something they call "sweet oil" which I figure is
> just glycerine.

Sweet oil is olive oil. It ostensibly serves two purposes if warmed and
dropped into the ear canal: it warms the tissues so there's a bit of
vasodilation to speed the operation of immune functions and it softens
earwax in case it's part of the problem.

Having said that, any oil you find in your kitchen should do about the
same thing. My grandmother used to put drops of warm oil in my ears in
the winter to forestall earaches. Mostly it made my earmuffs greasy.
IIRC, it was slightly above body temp - like baby-bottle warm; maybe
105°F or so.

> That, plus a dose of ibuprofen, I figure is the best
> you can do. And the ole' heating pad on the head, of course.
> Honestly, I don't ever remember having this myself. For some reason,
> I think they used to blow smoke in your ear. How this could help, I
> have no idea.

You can still find "ear candles" that are burned in or around ears that
they say draws out ear wax and supposedly does something else
(unspecified) good for the ears and even the whole head. Like those ads
that say their products "promote leg health" or "support immune
systems." <http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/candling.html>

Pastorio