I am reading “Patriot Battles” by Michael Stephenson. The author describes an incident of a Revolutionary War soldier who suffered a hideous head wound but somehow, unbelievably, survived his injury. The description of his treatment states:
What is “rough tow?” Some kind of gauze or bandage? And what is he talking about the particles? Does he mean strings were clinging to the body tissue, or that they left behind something in the wound? The text doesn’t explain any of this.
Well, wiki has this to offer re: tow, but I’m not sure what the medical application would be precisely.
Maybe he stuffed the poor guy like an armchair with wads of cotton before wrapping him up, to keep the brains in and not sloshing about overly much ?
Tow is an archaic term describing rough, unspun fibres - often of short length or inferior quality - the sort of thing that burlap is made from.
And I imagine the story is describing these fibres becoming embedded in a scab.
It survives in the word “towheaded”.
At first I thought this was an attempt at dark humor, but then I realized that you are quite correct. I had not thought of that.
and towrag,
Tow used to be used for, among other things, treating the foot illness “thrush” in horses. I still remember reading a book called The Horsemasters as a kid, in which a horse’s hooves were “packed with stockholm tar and tow” until the thrush was cured.
Tow is also the term for the fibers used to make cigarette filters.
I don’t know if you’re kidding but, just in case, the word toerag has nothing at all to do with tow.
From OED:
If the Patrick O’Brien Aubrey/Maturin books are to be believed tow - the un-spun rope fibres - was carried on ships and uses for cleaning things - including in one case a child’s bottom!
That tale was the source of the TOW missal.
Physically painful, that one. Good job.
A corruption of Taureg, surely (to make the second OED sense).