Old Time Methods

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XVII, Issue 4, 1 October 1924, Page 155

Old Time Methods

(Contributed.)

These instances happened over 40 years ago, on a large sheep station m the back country. We were busy shearing (Maori shearers). One of the men went into his pen to catch and bring out a sheep. As it happened, the one he wanted had horns. He caught the sheep by its horns, with his shears m his right hand, and started to pull it out on to the shearing floor, when the horn he held m his right hand broke off — with a jerk, of course — causing his hand to jerk upwards. The result was that both shear-blades entered under his chin, and came out through his tongue. The shed was festooned with streamers of cobwebs (many years old), so we got handfuls of the webs, rolled them up into balls, and tied them on to the under wound with strips of an old docking shirt smothered m dried blood and other dirt. This man was back at shearing again m a week or ten days, none the worse m any way. On another occasion we were docking lambs, some eight or ten miles from home, and finished fairly late m the afternoon. As it had come on wet, we were all m a hurry to get home. One of the Maoris was riding a young horse which was fairly flighty, owing to the rain and wind.

Before getting on he had put his shears into his saddle-bag on the offside, with the points up. He nipped on very quickly, caught his right leg on the shears, and both blades went clean through the biggest part of the calf of his leg. We got him off the horse, gathered a good supply of cobwebs, that had possibly been on the yard fences for years, made them up into pads, and tied them on with strips from a dirty, wet, bloody, old docking shirt. The man was put on a quiet horse and he rode home. In about two weeks he was working again. Some of the muscles or tendons were severed, and he has had a stiff leg ever since ; but blood-poisoning — no! Woolsheds are used all the year for storing sheepskins and dead wool — that is, wool plucked from dead sheep after they have become properly "ripe" and very "high." Many other dirty oddments may be found, so that these places ought to be the very best field for bloodpoisoning if there is any going. The writer of this article has no wish to decry modern surgery, but asks how is it that dirty wounds could heal so perfectly when such unauthorised methods — according to our ideas — were used.