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https://www.scribd.com/document/9727397 ... n-Frontier

Now the gravity of a friend‟s attempt to pull the arrow from
a wounded comradebecomes apparent.
If the shaft was left in place Dr. Bill‟s treatment was to make an incision to
enlarge the entry wound and slide a finger down the shaft to feel the depth of the wound anddetermine if the arrowhead is lodged in bone.
[23]
Without the shaft in place the doctor wasforced to search for the arrow by making a larger incision, probing through tissue, causing moretrauma, and taking more time. It was much easier for the doctor and patient if the shaft was leftin tact until a doctor could remove the head and shaft as one piece. Further, there was always
the danger that the arrowhead could not be found leaving the “a
ngular and jagged head has beenleft buried in bone to kill
–

for so it surely will.”
[24]
If, however, the arrowhead is removedproperly the wound was likely to heal naturally


Nice....

Very interesting article. Do you know if the causes of infection were at all understood by the 1880's ?

ORIGINAL: LeeChard

Very interesting article. Do you know if the causes of infection were at all understood by the 1880's ?

Perhaps to some degree they had hunches what caused them.

Another thing, anyone who has any medical training should know that you don't attempt to remove an impaled object in the field. Leaving the impaled object in place actually reduces the amount of bleeding the injured individual will suffer. Impaled objects should only be removed once the patient is in surgery.

There was a crazy Austrian doctor that claimed that "birth fever" (higher percentage of poor women giving birth in a hospital with medical students compared to rich women giving birth at home with the family doctor) was caused by the old and sound practice of not washing your hands after working with dead bodies.

That might have been a few decades earlier though.

So it depends on whether the doctor believed on the weird theories of microbes or not.

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Another thing, anyone who has any medical training should know that you don't attempt to remove an impaled object in the field. Leaving the impaled object in place actually reduces the amount of bleeding the injured individual will suffer. Impaled objects should only be removed once the patient is in surgery.

Yup. Only remove it when you have an opportunity at hand to deal with the resultant hemorrhage and other tissue damage resultant from its withdrawal. Until then, it's serving like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.

Also, the ballistic object in question usually isn't the worst part of the injury. So many film or TV shows noir that focus on getting the bullet out=healing. Less so in dealing with the hydrostatic shock to internal organs, sepsis from draining tracts , bowel perforation or catastrophic comminuted fractures of ballistic penetrating bodies hitting bone.