I’ve seen enough westerns to know that if you are shot with an arrow, you don’t pulll the arrow out… you need to push it through your body.
My question is why? I can understand if an arrow is made of steel, and has barbs on it that would be impossible to yank out without ripping the wound apart. However, the native americans used stones chipped into arrowheads. There doesn’t seem to be any reason the arrow must be shoved through the body. It would seem that pulling the arrow back out is the way to go.
So, does anyone know why they always show an arrow being broken off below the feathers and shoved through the wound instead of being pulled back out of the wound?
I agree with both of your statements. But this doesn’t seem to hold true in the movies. There is a scene in Two Mules for Sister Sara that has Sara pushing the arrow threw Clint’s back, even though the arrow has only penetrated his chest and AFAIK, didn’t make an exit wound until she pushed the arrow through.
Well, it’s the movies. A couch or an overturned table doesn’t actually offer any real protection against bullets, but the ones used in movies would seem to be made of reinforced titanium with how often and effectively they are used.
For what it’s worth regarding pushing an arrow through or pulling it out of a wound: the Mongols, who were using compound bows from ~1200-1400 AD would often wear silk vests or shirts underneath their armor. Oftentimes arrows wouldn’t be able to pierce the silk but would rather drive the unbroken silk into the wound. The arrow could then be removed through the entrance wound by carefully pulling on the silk.
Westerns are those types of movies where a guy will shoot 26 shots or so out of a six shooter without reloading, the hero can accurately shoot and kill someone in one shot from a hundred yards away with a pistol, a guy getting blasted in the chest with a shotgun is blown back 20 feet, and a thin wooden post will protect you from getting shot. But, other than defying physics, being very inaccurate with respect to human biology and wounds, and being historically inaccurate on top of that, westerns are great sources of information.
TV Tropes has an article that specifically addresses the arrow question:
I thought you should just leave it in until it can be properly treated. Couldn’t pulling it out or pushing it through cause more damage? Break off the shaft and keep shooting!
Hang on. A wooden table offers no real protection against bullets but a silk shirt will resist being pierced by an arrow? :dubious:
Dear gods, no! See the above TV Tropes link. The shaft helps to hold the arrowhead in place. If you break off the shaft and keep moving around, the arrowhead could shift around and slice up more blood vessels or organs and whatnot. If you don’t break off the shaft (and probably also if you do) you won’t be able to move much anyway. Just think of how much a pinched nerve in your back restricts your ability to move, and imagine how much worse it would be if it were caused by an actual sharp foreign object lodged in there. If you get shot with an arrow, you get knocked on your ass and you stay put and hope a medic tends to you.
my take on this: the reason for the silk shirts was to prevent the arrowhead itself from breaking the skin and thus causing infection. on the battlefield pre-antibiotics, the main reason for death of the wounded was infection of he wound. pulling out the arrow and the silk shirt at the same time left a clean wound
The link doesnt directly address unbarbed stone headed arrows.
I would imagine one risk with them is if you pull it out the arrowhead may come off and remain inside, depending on the construction. Pushing it through still wouldnt be clever but neither would simply ‘pulling it out due to the lack of barbs’ - you’d need to be pretty careful Id say.
Also you provide a large channel for blood loss by doing so depending where the hole is. You’d need to be treating the wound pretty quickly after removing it rather than standing up and shooting away.
Because it is make-believe. IRL, as with any foreign object, you should leave the arrow in place (unless it’s flaming), apply pressure to stop any bleeding and secure it in place until it can be removed at a hospital. If you can, you might want to trim off a couple feet of the shaft for convenience.
Attempting to remove the arrow might do more damage and the arrow could be the only thing keeping blood from spraying everywhere.
Pushing it through the other side is the worst idea ever.
I don’t understand the OP. Native Americans routinely made arrowheads in the classic, well, “arrowhead” shape. I don’t know what people really mean by barbs here but they look like barbs to me. From bone to obsidian, pulling one of those out backwards is going to do some damage. Keep in mind that the design of such heads was refined over thousands of years so that the arrow wouldn’t fall out as the animal ran off, ensuring that it would eventually succumb to its wounds.
If a groove is cut in the arrow’s shaft and filled with gunpowder, you can light the powder just before you push the arrow through and everything will be ok.
I’ll try to find a cite, but I’m positive I’ve read somewhere that pushing the arrow through was the standard method for extracting medieval English longbow arrows, because the arrowheads were only press-fitted to the shaft and pulling the shaft out would leave the arrowhead behind. I don’t know how Native Americans attached their arrowheads, or if they would come off in the same manner.
I’ve heard stories where the shaft was removed and the arrowhead simply left alone. Eventually, the area would swell and the arrowhead would be naturally expelled from the body. Other times, the body would form a calcium cyst around the foreign object, and it could remain in the body forever.
I couldn’t find a cite for the pus-expulsion method, but I did find some other good information on arrow wounds here (Warning: PDF).
ETA: According to that source, pulling out the arrow would result in the shaft coming out but not the arrowhead. The tendons used to tie the head to the shaft would loosen upon being wetted by the body’s fluids (and probably by the impact), and the shaft would just pop out (especially if the head was snagged on bone.)
I had heard that the act of snapping off the shaft of a medieval arrow that had hit you (as seen numerous times in Braveheart and the like) was effectively a form of suicide. As in you were ensuring the arrow could not be removed so you would die a relatively quick death of bleeding, as opposed to a slow death of infection (which was the usual result of an arrow being removed and the wound cauterized).
Yes. Native American arrows follow broadhead design principles (as opposed to medieval Eurasian armor-piercing bodkins). The design developed with stone points, but some Indians were using metal as early as 1640. By 1850 metal arrowheads were pretty much universally available.
Broadhead arrows do massive damage after lodging in the target. Having this type of arrow sticking in place certainly does not forestall bleeding; the design is intended to create and facilitate bleeding. That’s really how the killing is accomplished, with the blood loss that accompanies the arrow being in the target while the target moves.
Maybe if you have people who can carry you to the hospital and keep you absolutely immobilized until you get there. I wouldn’t apply much pressure either.
