Interesting CW story

[L Verge]

We've been searching for sites to include on our bus tours for Conference 2018 at Surratt House. I found this interesting little story while reading about a home in Front Royal, Virginia:

Many wounded soldiers were cared for at the McKay house, where blood stained the floors for years. Dabney Eastham, of Co. B, 6th Virginia Cavalry, was believed to be mortally wounded and was left lying in the yard. The next morning, when his father arrived from Rappahannock County to claim his son's body, he found that the grass and mud had clotted his wound and saved his life. To avoid opening the wound, the sod was taken up with him when he was carried into the house. Eastham survived, and left many descendants in Rappahannock and Warren County.

My father, a native of southern Virginia, would probably say, "You can't kill a good Virginia boy."

[JMadonna]

Hard to believe that mud & sod would clot a wound better than a bandage.

[L Verge]

(05-18-2017 07:40 PM)JMadonna Wrote:  Hard to believe that mud & sod would clot a wound better than a bandage.

This will likely gross some people out, but my uncle (born in 1902) once told us about working as a teenager in our family's store in T.B. One day, a recent immigrant from Germany was working on something that had broken on his buggy and managed to slice open a large cut on his forearm. Without hesitating, he reached down and grabbed a handful of manure that his horse had just deposited and slapped it on the open wound.

That "bandage" evidently worked very well because the gentleman waited for awhile and then went to the outside pump and washed his arm. No further bleeding, and the arm was fine the next time he came to the store. Never under-estimate the powers of Mother Nature.

[Gene C]

There must be some truth to it, in the words of Peyton Manning "Rub some dirt on it"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8kMrLx6_aQ
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSCALpmxnLE

[JMadonna]

Not saying it doesn't work, but if they didn't try a bandage before they put him in the yard to die - That must have been a real house of horrors.

[L Verge]

I would suspect that the sheer amount of wounded needing attention after that battle forced a triage situation where those whom the "doctors" thought they could save got preferential treatment. Eastham evidently was deemed unsaveable.