Yeah, I know..never put sharp knives in a drawer. While preparing for our Thanksgiving feast on Thursday, I hurriedly reached into a utensil drawer for a large fork. Instead of grabbing the fork, my finger grazed the edge of a serrated steak knife. Owie, owie, owie! OK, run to the bathroom, get the peroxide and hold a piece of TP over the cut until it stops bleeding. Then put a band-aid on and go about business. That is my usual procedure..but this baby didn't want to stop bleeding! As far as I could tell, it was only a small cut, but after at least five minutes of holding my dripping finger over the sink, I ran to the basement to look for some spiderweb. WHAT?!?
I vaguely remembered hearing that spiderweb will stop bleeding. Finding some cobwebs between the rafters in my unfinished 100+ year old basement, I held the injured finger up and began winding it with cobweb moving in a deosil fashion and voila! the bleeding stopped WITHIN SECONDS! What a sight! A blood covered finger encased in gray cobwebs! I have to tell you, my better half wanted to know what I was doing :)
I left the finger like that for about 30 minutes, then carefully washed off the webbing with a cotton ball soaked in water. The webbing had made a form fitting bandage of sorts and removing it did cause a few trickles to ooze from the cut. Another douse of peroxide, a band-aid, and I was able to continue our dinner preparations. Later that night, I did put a dab of antibiotic cream on it for good measure with a clean band-aid and the cut is now healing nicely.
Taking a quick gander on the web (pun intended) I discovered that this folk healing remedy was used by the ancient Greeks. The spider web acts as a catcher for the blood, essentially doing the job of platelets. Some would say this is not a sanitary procedure and should not be used on humans (do not use spiderweb that has been sprayed with bug spray!) but either I have clean spiders or 19th century doctors were right in confirming that spiders coat their silk with an antiseptic agent. I would say, that in a pinch, this is a good bit of information to know...and I won't hesitate to use it again if need be!
This page has home remedies to stop bleeding from small cuts. As always, please seek medical attention if needed!!!
This link tells about using spiderweb on a dog's ear.
