Thanks for all the responses everyone. I sent a lot of it off to my friend with the advice to "show THIS to your doctor." When I tried to tell her today that doctor's don't know everything and are often wrong, she laughed and said "oh, I think they went to school for it a lot longer than we did!" I guess she's still at that "blind acceptance" stage of believing western doctors are the only people who know anything about health. Tomorrow, maybe I'll tell her my little story of when my sister had pink eye. She went to the doctor who prescribed this stuff that cost nearly $20 (in 1975!) and after over a week of using it, it finally went away.....and came back a week later. Back to the doctor for more $20 medicine and it went away - and came back. Finally someone said to just take some salt and mix it with warm water, keep the eye closed and swab the outside of it with some cotton soaked in the salt water. Didn't hurt or sting and pink eye was gone the next day never to return again.