The ObserverLife and style

My left foot

Acid, knives and even liquid nitrogen did nothing to shift Nick Jones's stubborn verruca. But just as he was about to give up, he discovered the power of flowers

'How are the feet?' 32-year-old Tariq Khan enquires when we meet at the Marigold Clinic in the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. He invites me to take off my shoe and sock and clamber on to a couch and then peers at my foot. 'Not a problem,' he pronounces, peeling on a pair of surgical gloves and reaching for a fresh scalpel.

'When it comes to verrucas,' says Khan, placing the offending foot over a tin bowl and whittling away delicately at the exposed callous on the ball of my foot, 'I'm your man.'

As he works, he explains how there are five layers of skin and that the verruca virus lodges itself into the third layer, from where it rapidly multiplies and spreads. By now he has pared down the callous to the peachy-pink skin below. 'You see that?' he indicates, drawing my attention to a tracery of microscopic haemorrhages beneath the surface that indicate the verruca is still alive, despite my concerted eight-year campaign to eradicate it.

I'm not entirely sure where I first picked it up - from a grotty swimming pool, probably. Wherever it came from, it's been a complete pain, regularly swelling in size, its mottled callous a constant source of irritation, sometimes reducing me to a hobble. The faces of countless clueless GPs and well-meaning nurses flash before me, their gazes becoming gradually more sheepish until they eventually admit defeat and refer me on elsewhere.

Finally, six months ago, I got referred here to see Khan. I have heard good reports - that he has a PhD in verrucas and devised a revolutionary new system of treating them. I wonder what it is.

I have already endured cryotherapy, which entailed having localised frostbite applied using a liquid-nitrogen spray. This kills off several layers of skin, later shaved away, in the hope of zapping the elusive virus along the way. Then there were the acid-based treatments, which, painted on to the affected area, burn and blister your skin. Although the British Medical Journal reported last year that this was successful in 75 per cent of cases, it had proved singularly unsuccessful in mine. Laser surgery, I had been told, did not enjoy particularly high success rates either, and in some cases even stimulated the verrucas to resurface more virulently.

I had tried the less conventional remedies, too, such as banana-skin poultices, which puckered the skin to a white, rubbery consistency that I then vigorously attacked with a mini-grater. I'd even been known to go at the damn thing with a penknife, obsessively gouging holes into it. All to no avail.

'The verruca is a kind of ingrowing wart,' explains the softly spoken Khan. 'There are 80 different types of verruca out there. Of these, six are the most common and they usually appear on the hands or feet, but sometimes also on the nose, lips, eyebrows, back, neck - in fact anywhere on the body.

'You can burn a verruca, you can freeze it, you can cut it, you can do anything you like to it, but chances are it's not going to help because you're dealing with a virus, and a very clever virus at that - one that knows how to hover and hide behind the body's natural defences.

'When we burn, freeze or cut it, all we are doing is making a big hole in your skin and hoping that the immune system can kick in and clear up the mess. But often it's not strong enough to do that, either because you're getting old or because you've recently been under the weather.

'Every time you use acid or liquid nitrogen, you are just opening up a wound and allowing the virus to disperse and take root in surrounding blood vessels and tissue, where it just starts replicating again.'

Khan claims a 90 per cent success rate when treating verrucas. So if he's not resorting to freezing or burning, what does he use? Marigolds. Hence the name of the clinic.

Taufiq Khan, Tariq's father, first became interested in marigolds while treating ulcers in the 70s.

He discovered that there were two major families: the Calendula or pot marigold that comes in two varieties and the Tagetes marigold that comes in 57 varieties. Up until then homeopaths had classified all these varieties together, but Khan Sr discovered that the different types produced totally different effects, some stimulating cell growth, others inhibiting it. He found that certain marigolds of the Tagetes variety could be used to attack undesirable virus-like cells that were multiplying quickly, while leaving the surrounding skin and tissue unaffected. Taufiq went on to apply this discovery to treating bunions and joint inflammation, while his son Tariq further developed his research to tackle the treatment of warts and verrucas.

Today, the father-and-son team have their own line in patented homeopathic medicines, supplied mainly from their marigold nursery in Enfield, and they head up the Marigold Clinic where, apart from verrucas, bunions and ulcers, they also treat fungal infections of the skin and nails.

The NHS-backed clinic started life back in 1981 at St Pancras Hospital before relocating to its present site in 2002. Its reputation received a well-earnt boost a couple of years ago when it won an award for good practice in complementary medicine from Prince Charles's Foundation of Integrated Medicines. 'After that everything went mad,' Tariq recalls. 'GPs from all over started referring patients to us, and suddenly we had a six-month waiting list. We even ran out of marigolds at one point and had to step up production. I think that, before, a lot of people simply hadn't realised that homeopathic treatments were available on the NHS.' There are no accurate figures regarding verruca sufferers, but Tariq reckons that he sees upwards of 120 new patients a month.

I had been booked in for three half-hour sessions. At the first, Khan prepared a pungent and gooey marigold poultice that he swaddled on to my foot with padded bandages. I have to wet it once a day and to leave it on for a week.'When I apply this,' he explains, 'it only works in a localised way on the hard skin or virus. Viruses grow very quickly. Your normal skin has a different proliferation rate. It is not like the acid or freeze treatments which kill absolutely everything. Marigolds leave normal skin unaffected.' He also advised me to take marigold-based tablets three times a day. 'These work from the inside out - boosting up your immune system forcing the verruca out.'

Which one, I wondered, of the 57 varieties of marigold was Tariq using on me? 'Can't tell you,' he responded coyly. 'It's a secret formula.' But he did volunteer that it was a cocktail of several types.

When I come back a week later, the skin beneath the dressing is stained a vivid brown and Khan cuts away at it as easily as cheese. 'Good. That means the marigolds are doing their job - they're inhibiting the flow of protein to the virus.'

Khan pares away at the discoloured skin. 'You have five layers of skin and the top three is where the verruca enters, attaching itself to blood vessels and nerve endings. That area has now just died and so the blood vessels are no longer touching it. It is an odd concept to grasp. People tend to think a verruca is either there or it isn't. But it's more multi-layered than that. Try to think of it in terms of traffic lights. If green is alive and red is dead, then your verruca is now on yellow. Normal, healthy pink tissue is beginning to develop.'

Khan makes up an identical poultice to the first one and I return again the following week, when he reapplies himself with the blade.

'As the verruca dies, it changes colour. When it turns black, you know that the supply of blood to the virus has been cut off. The verruca is dead and will push itself out.

'When verrucas are alive they will bleed profusely when you cut them. But the fact that I can cut away now with no bleeding means that there is no blood supplying it. That is not to say that you are entirely out of danger. The dead particles are still in there and can reinfect. It shouldn't happen, because your immune system is building up again now, but it can.'

Khan explains that my case has been complicated by my verruca's location immediately beneath a bone. That pressure on it, combined with the build-up of dead scar tissue through prolonged and extensive treatment with acids and liquid nitrogen means that I will have to regularly file and smear it with marigold tinctures for another couple of months.

'As the new skin is building up you continue to scrape away the old tissue with bits of old dead virus floating in it,' Khan says.

One month on and I am still religiously taking the tablets, applying the tinctures and filing away. But Khan's marigolds have been a godsend for me, and my verruca is finally dead. And I can promise you one thing - you won't catch me down at the swimming pool again without my flip-flops.

· The Marigold Clinic, Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, Greenwell Street, London W1 (020 7391 8833). Spliffs - A Celebration of Cannabis Culture, by Nick Jones, is published by Chrysalis Impact at £7.99.

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