For fuck’s sake, this is actually real:

‘Lickers’ treating child burns in travelling community

Children from travelling families are not receiving appropriate burns treatment due to a cultural practice of “licking”.

Burns specialists have reported that both settled and Traveller children who suffer burns are being brought to “lickers” in their community, who then lick the burns prior to, or in preference to, conventional therapy.

Specialists at the Department of Plastic Surgery at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin and the Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery, Tallaght Hospital have recently published a paper in the journal Burns detailing the practice, which is thought to be an isolated cultural phenomenon.

Dr Deirdre Seoighe, plastic surgery registrar at Crumlin Hospital and co-author of the study, told IMN that the dangers of the practice include pathogen transmission and infection, but stated that the issue is primarily one of child protection.

“While adults also visit ‘lickers’, they are old enough to make their own decisions but we would be very concerned about the inappropriateness of young boys and girls being licked in certain places by a much older man,” she said, adding that the “lickers” are often paid up to €40 for their services.

I have no idea why I inserted this picture.

Dr Seoighe stressed that the practice is extremely common, having been reported in every plastic and burns unit in Ireland. “Often we have had ‘lickers’ trying to gain access and attempting to lick children within a hospital setting,” she told IMN. Dr Seoighe stated that aside from child protection issues, there is a huge risk of early infection and pathogen and oral commensal transmission, with one case of a young girl developing herpes zoster in a hand burn.

An informal audit conducted at the National Paediatric Burns Unit in Dublin suggested that children from the travelling community are disproportionately represented among children presenting to the unit. A spokesperson for Pavee Point told IMN that the practice of “licking” is now “essentially extinct” within the Traveller community. “Our research shows that it is not even a well-known practice among young Travellers, though some older Travellers do have recollections of the practice. Travellers who do believe in cures at all do so as complementary rather than alternative treatments,” said the spokesperson. Pavee Point’s position is that it is important to seek rapid professional advice on injuries of this sort, he added.