Warts come in various types and can pop up anywhere on your skin. They’re those annoying little rough patches that can be painful and uncomfortable to have, especially on your hands and feet. You might have heard that touching toads can give you warts. That’s just a myth, though, probably because some toads have bumpy skin. The truth is, warts are caused by viruses, not toads. These viral infections are contagious and can spread from person to person, often sneaking in through tiny cuts or scratches on your skin.

Different Types of Warts
There are several different kinds of warts, each with its own characteristics:

1. **Plantar Warts**: These show up on the soles of your feet and often have little black dots in the middle. They can be really painful because they’re usually located on weight-bearing parts of your feet.

2. **Periungual Warts**: These grow in clusters near your nails and can look like tiny cauliflowers. At first, they’re hard to see, but they can eventually get so big that they make your nails fall off.

3. **Digitate Warts**: These are long and stick out like little stalks on your face, especially around your eyelids, nose, lips, and chin.

4. **Flat Warts**: These are smooth and appear in groups on areas like your knees, wrists, hands, face, or neck. Unlike common warts, flat warts are flush with your skin.

5. **Common Warts**: These are the classic bumpy types that stick out from your skin and aren’t smooth or flush.

6. **Venereal Warts**: These occur in the genital area and are transmitted through sexual contact.

Preventing and Treating Warts
Warts come from the human papillomavirus (HPV), and there are over 100 strains of it. Each type tends to affect specific areas of your body. Fortunately, there’s a vaccine that helps prevent certain types of HPV that cause genital warts.

For treatment, you can find over-the-counter products and prescription meds. Salicylic acid and silver nitrate are commonly used for common, flat, and plantar warts. After applying these treatments, you can use sandpaper to smooth the area. However, don’t use these on your face or genital areas. If these treatments don’t work, doctors can use lasers, cryosurgery, or traditional surgery to remove them.

Weird Home Remedies
Before we had modern medical treatments, people tried all sorts of strange methods to get rid of warts. One old remedy involved rubbing a wart with a potato or placing wart blood on a bean and then burying it. People even chanted rhymes while doing these rituals. Another quirky method was dipping warts into water collected in a tree stump at midnight while reciting a poem. Unsurprisingly, these bizarre remedies were not effective. Thankfully, today’s medical advancements mean we don’t have to rely on potatoes or beans to deal with warts.