Ear candling

Where I am from they practice an insane sounding practice called ear candling to remove the wax from people's ears, it also supposedly cures ear infections. First off candling is a misnomer since the way I’ve seen it done is they don’t put a candle in your ears they put a cone of burning paper.
This is the insane part, your head and hair, plus your ear drum, vs. burning paper… Worse still it doesn’t actually remove the wax all it does is jam the wax further down. However there might be something to the candling helps ear infections part, since when paper burns incompletely it produces soot which settles everywhere. Soot contains DNA intercalculating compounds (generally poly-cyclic aromatics) which can be quit toxic especially to bacteria. (Bacteria have circular chromosomes, so the torsion induced by the agents must be removed enzymatically.) This is why they put coal tar in shampoo and skin cream because it kills bacteria and fungus.
So the soot settling in your ear as the paper burns might actually help kill bacteria, and give your immune system time to clear out the infection or if you are unlucky the soot could give you skin cancer, since it can damage your DNA too.
Please don’t think I condone sticking burning things in your ear as a medical treatment, I am just saying that there might be a reason people believe it works.