Petro Carbo salve is a Watkins product I’ve been using since I was boy, growing up in the 1950’s on a rural Louisiana farm.  This is a wonderful product, used to heal cuts and scratches, puncture wounds, burns and blisters long before Neosporin or Triple Antibiotic Oinment became popular. 

This excellent product has stood the test of time, having been introduced by Watkins in 1888.  Wow!  The active ingredient is carbolic acid, commonly known these days as Phenol.  It’s contained in a unique base of oil of Spruce, Camphor and Oil of Cajeput.  Oil of Spruce has been used for centuries to cure aches and pain.  Oil of Cajeput is extracted from White Tea, anc comes from the same family of plants that produces cloves and eucalyptus.  Camphor is a counterirritant that is extracted from an evergreen related to cinnamon that commonly grows in Asia.  Phenol is a topical analgesic that was used for many decades for disinfecting medical instruments.

The outstanding formulation provides a soothing protective coating with low-level anesthetic action, providing temporary relief of minor cuts and burns, sunburns, sores, scraps, chapped, chafed and windburn skin, rope burns, insect bites, etc.  I’ve used Petro-Carbo for decades to heal and cure each of these conditions.  We even used it to treat animals on the farm that had minor cuts and wounds.