Talk:Witch hazel (astringent)

Furniture

The supposed use of witch hazel to renew furniture finishes sounds to me like it's simply an effect of the alcohol in the preparation acting as a solvent. Does witch hazel work any better for this purpose than a simple alcohol-water mixture with a similar amount of alcohol? 216.59.230.140 03:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The effect of alcohols on clear wood finishes is restricted to the lacquers, (solvent release finishes.) Alcohols have no effect on varnishes (polymerizing finishes). The process of renewing a lacquer finish with a simple application of solvent is known as 're-amalgamation'. Moreover, the solvent (alcohols, ketones, xylenes)) has to be pretty much pure, since lacquers are hydrophilic, and the presence of ANY water (even high humidity) will turn the result cloudy.This is the cause of the white rings on furniture ,where the condensation from a cold glass has come in contact with the finish. Bottom line? The use of witch hazel for this purpose sounds like an old wives' tale to me.Toyokuni3 (talk) 06:14, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

i finally got around to looking at the label on a bottle of witch hazel at the drugstore. it does in fact contain 14% of some unspecified alcohol, presumably either isopropanol or ethanol. the remaining 86% is all essential oil (no water). so it could have some (i emphasize, some)application to clear wood finishing. now i have to take issue with calling it 'the treatment of choice' for hemorrhoids. otc hemorrhoid preparations contain a wide variety of ingredients, including glycerin (emollient), zinc oxide (protectant), hydrocortisone (anti-inflammatory), pramoxine (topical anaesthetic) and whale oil (!!!?????!!!!)(check the label on preparation h). unless somebody objects here soon, i'm going to change it to 'a treatment'.Toyokuni3 (talk) 20:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Wrong Witch Hazel in drug store is 86% Witch Hazel and 14% Alcohol. No additional ingredients. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.167.178.124 (talk) 18:42, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

There is a misplaced sentence after the furniture section that I'm moving closer to the acne discussion. The furniture section sounds as though it could be anecdotal and should be cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkow88 (talk • contribs) 15:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the above discussion, the essential oil content in drug store witch hazel is miniscule. A typical bottle might have 14% alcohol, ~85% water, and ~1% extracts and other stuff. So no, it's mostly water and would probably damage furniture. I'm removing that part of the article. Gigs (talk) 00:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Section rewrite needed

The entire "Composition of extract and uses" section is really terribly written and poorly cited — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.254.14.20 (talk) 01:42, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I've taken care of it. Thanks for bringing it up. Asgardiator ^{Iä! Iä!} 00:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Consistency regarding terminology for indigenous populations

Given Wikipedia's generally high standards for proper editing, I'm surprised to see the term "American Indians" used in the introduction and "Native Americans" pretty much immediately thereafter in the start of the History section. I'm not sure what the currently accepted term is (In Canada it's usually First Nations unless specifically referring to legal issues as described by the Indian Act (so named because it's...rather dated.), so I leave it to others to decide which term to use. (I'd avoid using the word Indian, unless referring to actual Indians...who are from a rather large segment of Asia called "India") 24.69.196.18 (talk) 13:00, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Really? I've never heard of this "India". Are you referring to India ink?

On a more serious note, this issue has been fixed and I removed the incriminating language, as well as shifting the history-factoid to the "History" section, as seemed appropriate. Asgardiator ^{Iä! Iä!} 00:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth, even the Smithsonian museum devoted to Native American culture, opened just 11 years ago, is named the National Museum of the American Indian. One might think that "Native Americans" might be distinguished from "American Indians" by the inclusion of Inuits, Yup'iks, Aleuts, and native Hawaiians, but apparently, and paradoxically, they seem to be excluded from that term in common usage. Taking an arbitrary phrase for the sake of investigation, I ran a Google Ngram Viewer search on the phrases "Indian casinos" and "Native American Casinos", with the former prevailing in Google's corpus of books by a factor between 3 and 5 depending on the year. This is one of those questions that's hard to discuss because one will always be wrong. —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:46, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for speaking up. We would do well to study Native Americans in the United States#Terminology differences, which indicates that:

1. more people prefer 'American Indian' to 'Native American', but:
2. most people are comfortable with using both terms and/or just 'Indian' interchangeably.

So, preferences are all over the place. I can't pretend to make a final call on this issue as a whole. However, of note is the title of the above article itself: 'Native Americans in the United States'. For the sake of internal consistency, let's leave it as 'Native Americans' in this article, too. Asgardiator ^{Iä! Iä!} 03:38, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

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