I spilled hot coffee on my hand. How long until it stops burning? :/

Indeed. Better already. Thank you.

Ouch. At least the coffee wasn't like molten lava. D:
I'm already better. :) 

Glad to hear that it's better. : )
Yeah, I was terribly unsafe at work when I was in my late teens.
Aside from the painful burns daily I cut my finger to the bone with a grinder, my shirt got caught in a buffing wheel and scratched my chest all up, I had burns all over my arms from grinder sparks and metal stuck in my arms and metal in my eye that the doctor had to take out after it got infected.
My brother had to wear an eye patch for a while after getting metal stuck in his eye. We always had a sunburn on our necks from the welder and I cut my face open twice from metal sticking out on the back of the truck, we'd get shocked from getting tools out of the truck in the rain while welding and we'd get welder's flash from not having the mask on at the right time. I pulled my groin lifting really heavy sections of steel and probably froze my hands a few times.
Eventually I bought some good work gear, but I new nothing and didn't care about safety and luckily for me I left the welding business with all of my finders and toes.

Thanks. I did cold water for several minutes, but then I got lazy and grabbed an ice pack. I know, I know, all the burn advice says no ice because the cold traumatizes the skin, but I didn't want to waste water and live at the sink, so I was careful. 

Yea I know... we all get tired of standing at the sink and we all think it will be ok... been there many times.. I used to work in a kitchen so I've had plenty of burns and I almost always either couldn't be bothered to run it under the tap or  failed to keep the burn under the tap long enough. Yes ice doesn't do the same thing and I think almost burns it more. 

Aww... thank you, E. *hugs*

I've never heard of it being used on skin though. Mucous membranes certainly, but how do you get it to go subdermal on a hand?

If you're talking about my reference to cocaine I'm not sure how its delivery system works as a topical, perhaps in conjunction with something like dimethyl sulfoxide. But it is listed as a "topical" in some formulations:

https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00907


As to the others a pediatrician we used to see prescribed lidocaine hydrochloride to be applied by a patch to be tightly taped over the injection site several hours before visits where injectable vaccines would be administered.  The bottle that it came in was clearly marked "For topical use only!" I still have one in the medicine cabinet. (Kids never used the stuff anyhow.)

And now there are a number of OTC medications that include either benzocaine hydrochloride or lidocaine hydrochloride to take the edge off of the pain caused by minor cuts, bruises  and burns.

I was talking about cocaine itself. The rest of the "caine" family certainly can be applied as topical locals. Cocaine is very occasionally used as a topical in the treatment of oral and nasal pain where the mucous membrane can absorb it. Making it go transdermal could be tricky, methanol esters are containdicated in the treatment of burns.

OK.

First of all, cocaine is almost always the anesthetic of choice for ambulatory nose and throat surgeries where the patient is not subjected to general anesthesia. Except for certain "celebrities" that seem to have a "natural" tolerance to that particular pharmacuitcial for some reason?  (I even had a Canadian surgeon attempt to use it on me during an outpatient uvulopalatopharyngoplasty procedure when my tonsils refused to stop bleeding and he attempted to correct with electrocauterization (he shrunk those too with the laser); most bitter, foul-tasting stuff I ever experienced; plowed ahead without the benefit of numbing the surgical field.)

Again, not sure how it its absorbed or why its absorption would be any different than any of the other "caines" as they're all in the same basic drug family. I'll have to ask one of my kids that's in that game. (One's a nurse and the other is in med school, a fellow student and friend has a PhD in Pharmacology so the answer is certainly available to them if they don't already know.)

And I'm not sure why you mention methanol esters. While cocaine is an ester like Procaine, Tetracaine and Benzocaine it's NOT a methanol derivative. (The other members of the caine family are amides.) And any carriers for them would not necessarily be methanols either. In fact, I'm not so certain that a cocaine solution or paste wouldn't be absorbed directly into the skin without benefit of a special carrier. After all, one of the characteristics of mucus membrane is that it's moist.

https://www.esbalabs.com/how-do-skin-numbing-topical-anesthetics-work.html This post was edited by Salt and Red Pepper at September 16, 2017 11:32 PM MDT

Methanol is added to salicylic acid to make it go transdermal - oil of wintergreen, found in liniment and topical creams used for the treatment of muscular pain. Not recommended for the treatment of burns, for obvious reasons, and I doubt it would be suitable as an admixture with cocaine. Amides are synthetic derivatives that don't require a carrier, natural cocaine does - you'd need something that penetrates skin quickly.  It's used in subdermal surgery for obvious reasons - not only analgaesia but it's a vasoconstictor as well, so it minimises bleeding. (Dad was a paramedic, his brother a pharmacist and I heard them dicussing it more than once).
Mucous membranes are permeable, skin isn't or you'd melt in the rain.

We're not talking about aspirin or some snake oil OTC balm here. Cocaine is always used under the direct supervision of medical professionals and can have a radically different delivery system than OTC medications for that very reason. (Again, look up DMSO. It will carry anything that will dissolve in it (and most things will as it's primarily an industrial solvent) through the skin. A popular demo of that effect is to dissolve garlic oil in it and then stick your finger into the solution. You will literally "taste" the garlic almost immediately.

Oh, your skin most certainly does absorb water. Why do you think that you look like a prune after staying in the bathwater for an extended period of time? This post was edited by Salt and Red Pepper at September 17, 2017 12:28 AM MDT

Of course skin absorbs water - but not quickly enough for a topical analgaesic to be effective. As you pointed out, it takes "an extended period of time". If you want slow release, that's fine.

And now we're back to a carrier like DMSO . . . but cocaine IS dispensed as a topical. Check the PDR, again and stop trying to argue a subject that you have little knowledge of.