It worked without unwanted side-effects? Wow.

These days I bet a thermal camera would be great for finding those.

Rossman (see link above) shows how to use 91% isopropyl alcohol to find these more effectively. It evaporates more rapidly at the heat source, so there's your short. I don't know how well this would work to find shorts in middle layers of circuit boards; I am still learning to identify the broken active components on the surface.