Removing arrows, also status and medieval medicine

[nancylebov]

The comments go into unnerving detail about removing arrows-- much detail about historical methods, and firm advice about letting professionals do it these days.

Read down, and you'll find details about medieval beliefs that the nobles and peasants needed different foods and medicines. Anyone know if this is something medieval people really believed?

Also, you can keep wolves away from mammoth meat by using yogurt.

The comic is good too, but this is one of the rare times when the comments are better.

ETA: More about arrow wounds, plus explaining why wooden cutting boards are more sanitary than plastic.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The Romans, at least, had a specialized surgical implement called an arrow spoon. This was specifically designed to extract arrows without the barbs tearing the patient up worse, or the head getting stuck. It was discussed in the histories of Roman medicine I read while I was researching GURPS Low-Tech.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that some cutting boards are made from wood with antimicrobial properties...ah:
http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/docliver/Research/cuttingboard.htm

"we found essentially no differences among the tested wood species"

So...no. But the key takeaway:

"We soon found that disease bacteria such as these were not recoverable from wooden surfaces in a short time after they were applied, unless very large numbers were used. New plastic surfaces allowed the bacteria to persist, but were easily cleaned and disinfected. However, wooden boards that had been used and had many knife cuts acted almost the same as new wood, whereas plastic surfaces that were knife-scarred were impossible to clean and disinfect manually, especially when food residues such as chicken fat were present."