There’s a neat story I once read — about a famous physicist — that goes like this:

To enjoy the fresh air at night, he would prop open the window with a stick. But when it rained, the water blew in and soaked everything.

The solution? He balanced the stick on a sugar cube. The rain dissolved the cube, the stick fell, and the window closed.

Sometimes simpler works better.

I can personally attest to that, after a long-running battle with a plantar wart on my foot.

For those unfamiliar, this is not one of those ugly, cauliflower-textured warts that make little girls gasp and tug their mother’s sleeve. Most plantar warts are tiny, the size of a pinhead. They are barely noticeable.

Except for mine.

It had grown a little larger than the circumference of a pencil eraser. It sported black dots the size of pepper grains, representing the tips of clotted capillaries carrying blood to the angry little thing. It had suffered the indignity of two series of strong acid treatments.

The first time, my podiatrist shaved skin off my foot with a scalpel, then dabbed a concentrated dose of cantharone on the wart’s exposed core.

“We’re going to burn a hole in your foot,” he announced proudly. And burn it did. For a few days I limped to work and propped my stockinged, throbbing foot on my desk. After several acid treatments, the wart vanished.

For a few months.

Then it came roaring back.

My podiatrist minced no words. If the second round failed, surgery was next. That meant crutches for four to six weeks, to prevent a scar from forming on the sensitive, weight-bearing ball of my right foot. I would have to give up cycling 130 miles a week and riding time trials.

So of course, the wart returned, like a bad party guest swinging by for another shot at the punch bowl. Desperate, I invented my own treatment regime. I deployed an immune-system modifying drug, a pair of fingernail clippers, tweezers and fine-grit sandpaper.

All the snipping, sanding and tweezing succeeded in one thing: creating a smaller, sister wart nearby.

While browsing the Internet, I stumbled across the Cult of the Duct Tape. Yes, clarion trumpets, light from the heavens — some people are fanatical about its many applications.

That’s right: simple, unpretentious, workmanlike duct tape. The foot soldier in man’s battle to make things adhere to each other. The fabric-based tape with the super-sticky rubber-based adhesive. One Web site, dedicated to its medical uses, gloriously describes this product as “HMO on a roll.”

If the site is to be believed, duct tape has prevented frostbite, fixed ingrown toenails, stabilized trick knees and helped cure bursitis. And, of course, it kills warts, writers claimed, in too-good-to-be-true testimonials. Their simple eloquence spoke to me. Said one: “I walked around school for five days with this piece of duck tape on my neck. I felt like a big dummy. But after five days the wart was gone.”

So, feeling like a big dummy, I put some over-the-counter acid on the wart and cut out a generous square of duct tape. For the record, those drugstore wart-be-gone products had done nothing for me in the past.

For four weeks, I walked around with a 2-inch-by-2-inch patch of duct tape on the bottom of my right foot. I gained renewed respect for the rugged gray stuff. Changing the duct tape daily, I noticed that it really, really sticks. Also, your skin underneath gets whitish and soft.

The wart area turned blister-white, and there were other changes I’ll spare you. Then it began to shrink.

Now it’s gone. Really. It’s my own little miracle. I’ve never seen the Virgin Mary’s face on a grilled-cheese sandwich or Satan’s image on the shell of a slider turtle, but I’ve got this, and it sure feels good.

Maybe it isn’t a miracle. A study in a pediatric journal in 2002 found that freezing with liquid nitrogen cured 60 percent of patients of their warts. But duct tape was 85 percent successful. The speculation: Duct tape irritated the warts, causing the body’s immune system to clean them up in a bit of all-natural housekeeping.

Whatever. All I know is, why make life complicated.

Got a wart?

You head to Holy Cross. I’m going to Home Depot.

Richard Bedard is an assistant business editor. He can be reached at or 954-356-4666.

DO IT YOURSELF

Here’s the simple treatment plan I used to vanquish my plantar wart. I used Duofilm with the duct tape, which may work faster than the tape alone. Before trying this or any home remedy, seek the advice of a medical expert before starting treatment.

Dab some over-the-counter wart-treatment liquid, such as Duofilm, on the plantar wart.

Cover with a large 2-inch-by-2-inch patch of duct tape.

Change the duct tape daily, coating the wart each time with more Duofilm.

After three weeks, or four at most, the wart should be gone.

If a tiny wart does reappear, just cover it with duct tape for a few days: It should go away.