Why is it dangerous to remove an object from a wound?

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

• rub­ber glove with wa­ter;
• nails.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Pierce a rub­ber glove filled with wa­ter with a nail. Ob­serve that the liq­uid ei­ther flows out of it very slow­ly or doesn’t flow at all.

Process de­scrip­tion

A wound is a vi­o­la­tion of the in­tegri­ty of the skin or mu­cous mem­branes of the body caused by in­jury. The in­jury can be caused, for ex­am­ple, by the pen­e­tra­tion of a for­eign ob­ject into the body. The for­ma­tion of such a wound can be demon­strat­ed clear­ly and pain­less­ly us­ing a glove filled with wa­ter and a nail. The wa­ter­logged glove plays the role of body tis­sues, and the nail is the for­eign ob­ject. Due to the fact that the glove is elas­tic, it fits snug­ly to the nail and “seals” the hole, pre­vent­ing the liq­uid from flow­ing out quick­ly, but if you pull the nail out, the wa­ter will start leak­ing rapid­ly from the fresh “wound.” The same thing can hap­pen with a real wound – when an ob­ject en­ters the hu­man body, the in­tegri­ty of the skin, mus­cles, and even blood ves­sels with ar­ter­ies are vi­o­lat­ed. A for­eign ob­ject, just like the nail in our ex­per­i­ment, seals the wound and par­tial­ly stops the bleed­ing.

Com­ing soon! Learn the ba­sics of medicine with a new sub­scrip­tion from MEL Sci­ence!