wounds from large fragments or entire projectiles
show extensive and deep contusions, crushing, a tearing
away of tissue. They are vast
erosions, deep furrows, large lesions often with significant
pieces of flesh hanging, fimbriated,
ecchymotic, contused, and frequently, in their deep parts, complicated
by metallic foreign bodies, by earth, by fragments
of clothing and thus doomed to suppuration and grave
complications, gangrene and
tetanus, for example.
For such wounds use a simple mda’ dar
fletched with crow, with a slender point of polished copper,
and its shaft painted red. To its feathered end
attach five narrow lengths of silk—yellow, white, red, blue, and green—
and three sheep-bone dice. Move a mirror
along the patient’s body until it reaches the source of his pain.
At this exact location set the arrow with its point
touching the wound and begin
to suck at the other end of the shaft.
In this way, clots of blood,
free splinters of shrapnel, and all tissue that has lost its vitality
are removed. Wipe the wound surface with a pad soaked
in permanganate of potassium and then apply an ointment
containing corrosive sublimate, salol, antipyrine, carbolic acid,
and iodoform, with Vaseline as an excipient.