Bathe in the river Jordan, seven times....

I would have tried it...
I'll try almost anything, (although my Mother, thank God, resisted when my Grandmother suggested she try Lysol on my hands and feet when I was a kid......)
Apparently the incidence of infant eczema, like that of almost any other condition related to the auto-immune system, has gone haywire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/fashion/30skin.html?ref=fashion

I seem to defy trends, (well, of course, how could I be ordinary?,) mine has NOT gotten better with age, and in a large family with not much better than average hygiene (although some... my Mom is a clean freak, but it was a losing battlewith 5 sons, and 6 less than prissy daughters,) I think something like half of us have some kind of respiratory or dermatological allergies.
I'll look into the Cetaphil Moisturizing Lotion and Triple Cream Severe Dry Skin/Eczema Care mentioned in the article, although barring a severe outbreak (I just came through one,) or something on my face, Bag Balm seems to have made an enormous difference in the likelihood of a mild irritation progressing into a debilitating one.
People who don't experience rashes have trouble understanding what a power the impulse to scratch, (I have, in my sleep, despite wearing gloves and keeping my nails short almost to the quick, scratched hard enough to break the skin through clothing of Dickie's work clothes - weight,) and I admit to sometimes getting testy with people who say "Stop scratching!" or tell me about something they know will "clear that right up."
Yeah, 'cause I never heard of cortisone.
Of course, often, my problems are directly tied to stress, and shamefully, sometimes a result of ingesting something I suspected or even knew had a bit of some allergen in the recipe, and since both of those are more or less my own fault, I try to to make too big a deal out of it, and wish people would pretend not to notice it, (though I was touched by the chorister who ran out to find some band-aids when he noticed I was bleeding all over the keys once during Mass.)
But you think I'm cranky and snarky NOW? stay out of my way when....!
And a warning to the rest of the world, you think incivility has reached unpleasant proportions NOW? If the incidence of eczema has indeed grown from 1 in 20 to 1 in 6... well, there're gonna be a whole helluva lot more of us cranks out there in coming years.
At one point when I was younger, I thought someone was yanking my chain with the Lectionary, especially on weekdays, when I was at my most uncomfortable and most unsightly someone at Church always seemed to be talking about leprosy....
One great line from the Times article: Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s good for you — think of poison ivy.
Oh, and I don't like to brag, (not much!) but that accompanying photo of an "outbreak" on a hand?
In my entire life, I would literally never even have noticed anything that slight.