So far, there have been a lot of stomach-turning moments on this season of Game of Thrones, but possibly the most disgusting scene from the first two episodes was Samwell Tarly cutting greyscale off Jorah Mormont's body. All that pus was even worse than the poop montage from the premiere. However, we know that it is with good reason that Sam cut off Mormont's greyscale. It's the important first step in Archmaester Pylos' instructions on how to cure the disease, but what comes next?
We were a bit preoccupied by all the talk of how much pain Jorah was about to be in to pause and read all the details in that giant book Sam was using for guidance on the process. But, screen-grabs from the episode show more details on what exactly goes into curing greyscale according to Archmaester Pylos On Rare Diseases. First, the Greyscale must be pulled back from the skin, and then, a special ointment must be applied on top.
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A recent Reddit post, which we found with help from HelloGiggles, features a photo of the salve's recipe from the archmaester's book, and it very clearly shows that the ingredients include "the resin of pine, the green bark of elder twigs, white beeswax, and oil from the olive." In the comments, a Redditor named firelark_, broke down those ingredient for us.
According to Redittor firelark_, pine resin was historically used to “draw out impurities or poisons, stem blood flow, and is both antibacterial and antifungal.” It was also explained that elder bark reduces inflammation, beeswax is an anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and antiviral, and olive oil restores damaged skin cells. The user concluded the comment with, “This is nothing more than a topical salve that would clear out pus, prevent infection, keep the patient from bleeding out, and aid the skin in healing. So, the actual 'cure' for greyscale is to cut it off, lol.” Another commenter summed up our reaction to this fairly simply cure quite well by saying, "It took them a thousand years to figure this out?" That seems shocking, but remember, we aren't yet sure this "cure" is actually going to work. Don't forget Archmaester Pylos died of greyscale, and that cure is from his book.