Also, arrows rarely, almost never, immediately kill you - arrows usually kill by the victim bleeding to death which takes a few minutes. In the movies, anyone shot with an arrow fictionally immediately dies and immediately falls down. If a real person was shot with a real arrow, he usually would have plenty enough time to shoot back and kill you before he died.
Movies, and tv, also have fast draw handgun shootouts in the middle of main street.
Very few of my arrows have barbs, I almost always use Bear Razorheads…a few of my off-brand hunting arrowheads have barbs, and, of course, all the fish arrows.
It is not uncommon to shoot a deer, and later discover that an old arrowhead from bowhunting season is still in the deer, usually lodged into one of his bones (the shaft having been broke away long ago) and healed over.
If you shoot a deer in the rump without breaking any major arteries or veins, and the arrowhead sticks into one of the deers bones, I would guess the deer would be ok in a few weeks with the arrowhead remaining in its body forever.
Most arrowheads are designed to go in easily and come out really difficultly. If you pull them out they catch the muscles and flesh and tear it up as you pull the arrow out. Even if you don’t bleed to death, you’re almost certain to get infected.
So ancient surgeons invented a device called an arrow spoon. It was a metal tool with a head that was pointed in the front, rounded in the rear, and was bigger than an arrowhead. The idea was you would shove the spoon into the wound along the arrow shaft until it was around the arrowhead (which must have been a fun thing to experience before anesthesia was invented). Then you pulled the arrow and the spoon out together. The rounded edge of the spoon would keep the sharp edge of the arrowhead from tearing up the flesh as it was withdrawn.
A composite or compound bow in the old sense was one that was made out of more than one kind of material. English long bows were “self bows” which means that they were basically a very refined bent stick. A composite bow might include layers of horn or be backed with sinew. Composite bows were limited, in those days, by the animal-based adhesives that were available. Based on books I remember reading as a kid, composite bows were very sensitive to changes in humidity and it was bad idea to get one wet. Accordingly, archers often had a second self bow for use in wet weather.
To expand upon what Little Nemo said and try to answer the OP’s question: it depends upon whether the arrow is barbed or not.
On a smaller scale, think of a barbed arrow like a fishhook. If you embedded a fishhook into the fleshy part of your hand (something a lot of us who have fished have done), the broad part of the barb will shred the flesh if you try to back it out the way it came in.
You have two choices to remove it without causing severe damage. Either incise the area around the hook and remove it or push it through, clip the barb, then back the smooth part of the wire out of the entry wound. The latter is usually the least damaging.
Depending upon where you were hit and the type of arrow, the same would hold true with an arrow.
I know that natural expulsion works for small foreign objects such as splinters and thorns, but I’m thinking that pus expulsion of something the size and depth of an embedded arrowhead would most likely leave a permanently open suppurating ulcer or something like that, ultimately causing death by septicaemia or some other horribly unpleasant end.
For what it’s worth Mongol military historian Timothy May seems slightly skeptical of this explanation, as it is unsupported by any contemporary cites. It was speculation by James Chambers in his 1979 book The Devil’s Horsemen, based on the fact that the Mongols did actually start wearing silk undershirts after their conquest of Northern China. But his speculation was then taken as fact by a number of subsequent authors, who propagated the idea without any medieval sources to back them up. It’s an interesting speculation, but said silk might also have just been a luxury garment.
ETA: Speaking of Mongols, they apparently used a variety of arrows and arrowheads, some of which were wider at the tip and as May notes, would do more damage trying to push through rather than pulling out. Just to reinforce the already stated idea that it very much depends on the type of arrowhead that was embedded.
Re-reading that post of mine Dissonance, it suddenly occurs to me that it looks it might by mocking or challenging by repeating the “For what it’s worth” opening - wasn’t my intent. I actually wrote it without reference to the wording of your post at all.
So I wasn’t trying to be snarky, just informative :).
I thought part of the idea behind pulling it out by the silk shirt was that the arrows were designed to spin in flight, so when it penetrated, it created a spiral wound. Pulling it out by the silk, which twisted along with the wound path, ensured that you were not simply pulling the arrow straight out and inflicting more damage.
i posted this earlier in the thread. the arrowhead would enter the body taking the silk material with it; it was the silk which actually penetrated the skin. in this way, infection was avoided. infection had always been the major cause of battlefield death, even with “light” wounds.
Possibly. As noted the silk thing is speculative. The spinning arrows are also speculative, but slightly better grounded. It’s based on observations of Mongols in the early 20th century that used asymmetrical fletching to achieve that effect. The idea is that the spinning would increase penetration ( possibly at a slight cost to sheer range ). However I don’t think any fletching survives from medieval Mongol arrows, so while it is a reasonably supposition, it’s not a certainty.
Check out Two Mules for Sister Sara with Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine. When Clint is shot through the chest with an arrow, he breaks off the shaft sticking out of his chest, puts gunpowder on the broken shaft, which is lit, and them MacLaine pulls the arrow out from the back with burning gunpowder cauterizing the wound. I don;t know if that works, but movies are way cooler than real life.
I wouldn’t have thought they would spiral much once they start driving into flesh, unless the arrowheads were somehow screw-shaped so as to make them drive in that fashion.
(by way of analogy, imagine spinning a butterknife (along its long axis) and dropping it still spinning into a block of butter - the rotation might make the entry a bit messy, but once the blade begins to penetrate, the rotary motion will be quickly arrested.
No worries, I wouldn’t have noticed myself if you hadn’t pointed it out and wouldn’t have taken it as snarky from you if I had. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s historical mythology.
My turn to hope I’m not going to come across as challanging; I’ve no doubt that you have a greater knowledge of the time period than I do. It’s the limited number of books where I could have read it that gave me the feeling that I’d read it in print from something prior to 1979. Its mentioned in my copy of The Encyclopedia of Military History, first revised edition 1976, so it might predate James Chambers. It’d make a good Mythbusters episode to see if it works anyway.
Interesting. Looks like May may be wrong then ( heh ), which now makes me curious where the idea came from. I’m going to assume May didn’t miss an original source, but you never know - the problem with reconstructing Mongol history is that it was recorded in a variety of languages, such that it is very difficult for any modern scholar to read all the original source material personally.
And it would make a good mythbusters episode, but to do it right they really are going to need a human volunteer ;).
