A doctor in the US has recounted the moment she discovered that bacon could be used to treat medical conditions.

Writing on the medical blog KevinMD, Dr Jen Gunter said that last year she and a team of doctors at the Michigan State University were presented with a four-year-old girl who suffered a blood disorder which made her bleed for abnormally long periods of time.

The youngster was suffering a bloody nose and was given a range of treatments, including a blood transfusion and a clotting serum to help stem the bleeding but nothing worked. Until Dr Gunter and the team decided to try using bacon.

Dr Gunter wrote that the team were left with no choice but to stick strips of the “cured salt pork” (later nicknamed a “bacon tampon”) into both her nostrils to stop the girl’s nosebleed.

Three days later the medical team checked on the girl to find the bleeding was “significantly less evident than it had been on all previous postoperative evaluations,” she wrote.

Dr Gunter said bacon’s high salt content helped cause the nostril to swell, constricting the blood vessels and slowing the bleeding allowing the blood to clot.

A month later the girl suffered another nose bleed and was given the same bacon treatment which this time stopped the bleeding immediately.