[2] Escharotics, such as black salves, are currently advertised by some alternative medicine marketers as treatments for skin cancer, often with unsubstantiated testimonials and unsupported claims of effectiveness.

An example of this is documented and labeled as a form of quackery in a 1955 Time magazine article:[5] A 37-year-old housewife had a skin condition that later (at Duke) proved not to be a cancer.

[3][6] Practitioners who use or sell escharotics frequently provide testimonials, in place of scientific evidence, to convince others of effectiveness and safety which does not exist.

Lawson covered her abdomen in black salve under the direction of Dennis Wayne Jensen, a self-proclaimed healer, who advised her that it would draw out her ovarian cancer.

Lawson's sister-in-law described the wounds as extending from "above her pubic bone, all across her abdomen almost up to her rib cage", and as "raw, mutilated bubbling flesh".

[13] In 2019, Jensen was issued a prohibition order by the Health Complaints Commissioner of Victoria, forbidding him permanently from providing substances which "he (or anyone else) claims can cure or treat cancer or other serious disease or illness".

[14] Common ingredients of black salves include zinc chloride, chaparral (also known as creosote bush),[15] and often bloodroot, a plant frequently used in herbal medicine.

[16] The extract of bloodroot is called sanguinarine, a quaternary benzophenanthridine alkaloid which attacks and destroys living tissue and is also classified as an escharotic.