A black tea bag... I have never heard of that and I wonder if that can work on humans.
My mother used tea bags exclusively at the first sign of our dogs developing hot spots (usually on the belly). One dog was German Shepherd, the other a mix of German Shepherd and Newfoundland Sheepdog. Since our entire family were tea drinkers, she would make a pot and after we were done with the pot, remove the bags (usually two - Tetley orange pekoe) with any remaining tea (strong), put it in a glass jar, and use it as required. She wouldn't use anything more than a day old, which wasn't a problem because there was always tea in our house. It worked wonders for them, truly. The hot spots became less red, the tea bags were cooled (and drippy, you don't want a dry/squeezed out tea bag) when used. It was used so often that we would say to the dogs "You got sore belly?" and they would go onto their backs, spread their hind legs, and let us put the tea bags and cooled tea on their exposed bellies and hot spots, and then stay there when we placed the tea bags over the hot spots until we removed them. We treated them several times a day until we saw marked improvement, and did not keep the tea bag on the hot spots for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Also, tea bags work on stys. I've used them on three different occasions in my life when I got stys by popping out the lens portion of cheap sunglasses, placing the cooled tea bag over my eye, and then putting the sunglasses on to hold it there for about a 1/2 hour to an hour - it worked every single time.
I have recipes for poultices to bring abcesses to a head as well, but will leave that for another day!
