Spiderweb: A Way To Treat Wounds

In ancient Greece and Rome, doctors used spider webs to make bandages for their patients. Spider webs supposedly have natural antiseptic and anti-fungal properties, which can help keep wounds clean and prevent infection. It’s also said that spider webs are rich in vitamin K, which helps promote clotting.

Spider webs are incredibly strong. It’s made from silk produced from the body proteins of the spider, turning it into silk through spinnerets. Using cobwebs or spider webs has been done since ancient times when Greeks and Romans treated wounded soldiers with them to stop bleeding. Soldiers would also use a combination of honey and vinegar to clean deep wounds and then cover the whole thing with balled-up spider webs.

An open wound treated with a cluster of spider webs will dry out faster. Spider webs have antifungal and antiseptic properties that keep bacteria away, minimizing the chances of an infection. As long as the web is clean, it will not cause any infection or aggravate the wound’s condition at all.

 It’s easy to make your bandage. First, you have to look for a clean spider web — you want a freshly spun web or one that does not have an insect corpse in there. If the spider’s in there, remove the little critter carefully and harvest the web.

Then, ball up the spider web and stuff it onto the wound. Make sure all edges are covered by the web. The web has to touch the surface of the wound. Get a sterile cloth and cover the wound with it. And there you have it, your bandage made from a spider web.

If the spider web has hardened on your wound and it’s hard to remove, just run your wound over warm water. The water will loosen the web, making it easier to remove.

Apart from spiderweb, there were other remarkable ways of treating wounds in the medieval era. The treatments offered might include:

Leeches - commonly used (and still occasionally employed today) for bloodletting and for treating rheumatic pains, gout, all types of fever, and hearing loss

Maggots - to remove dead flesh (still in use today)

Mice - to cure problems such as gout, and earache and even to clean teeth

Ferrets & woodlice - in the treatment of whooping cough.

 The book, "Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture" also exposes us more to the medieval way of medicine.

Excerpt from Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture:

 "Many modern misconceptions about the Middle Ages suggest that medieval society was medically stunted, backward, or primitive and that treatments bordered on the ludicrous or downright dangerous. But numerous surgical texts circulated throughout medieval Europe and some offered more useful (and successful) treatments than others. Medieval surgery evolved from a complex system of text, practice, belief, transmission, science, and folklore. The first major medical center was in twelfth-century Salerno, Sicily, where Christian and Muslim communities lived side by side. Many medieval medical and surgical texts and treatments reflect Muslim influence and, in some cases, origins."

By Omonijo Subomi