Worst-case scenario: Urinate on a wound to clean it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve posted this in IMHO because I don’t think there’s an absolute correct answer to this but rather it’s a judgment call.

Suppose you’re in the wilderness, several days from any medical help, and your hiking partner falls down an incline and gets a huge gash in her leg.

In the process of falling, the wound gathers all sorts of dirt, rocks and assorted organic gunk. Bleeding is not intense, so a major artery was not ruptured, but enough blood is oozing out that unless the wound is closed fairly quickly, problems from blood loss will become an issue soon.

You are going to do your best to close the gash with some straps from your gear, but the question arises about whether to cleanse the wound first, and if so, with what.

You don’t have any clean water, and the only water nearby is some stagnant pond water that looks very nasty.

So, because the urine of a healthy person is normally sterile (and you are healthy), do you urinate on the wound to cleanse it before you wrap it up?

Do you use the stagnant water?

Or do you use neither, and just hope that the medical folks you get to several days later can fight the nasties that most certainly will have taken hold in your friend’s wound – and may have spread throughout her body?

I don’t know why I think of these odd worst-case scenarios – maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m a nervous parent of two young children …

P.S. I just thought about something. Do military medics concern themselves with these types of questions? After all, the wound I described might very easliy arise during combat, and battlefield conditions are very less than ideal.

2

Your urine’s only sterile when it’s in your bladder. On its way out, it picks up some nasty stuff.

3

Well, I wouldn’t call it nasty stuff, personally. You have some of your normal skin flora living in the lower regions of your urethra, so urine picks up some of your skin bacteria. Some of those species can cause infections, but generally, your urine is pretty clean.

However, in this case (and IANA paramedic), I’d say the priority is to stop the bleeding and get your friend to a doctor. If an infection starts up, they can treat it later. If you have clean water to clean it with, great. If not, I wouldn’t worry about it. And that certainly may be wrong.

4

There are probably some natural salves that you could find or make that would be better.

You peed on her, didn’t you?

5

Same with blood though, isn’t it? Is fresh urine on a wound any worse than fresh blood?

Seems like a good question…

6

I’d hope that you’d have “clean water” or water purification capabilities, since you’re “in the wilderness, several days from any medical help.” As a worst-case scenario, this vignette as described would show evidence of spectacularly poor planning and judgement! Infection could be the least of your problems if you have no clean water.

7

Cleaning the wound WOULD be a good idea. It’s not that hard to get a particularly nasty infection which could eventually circulate in the bloodstream and settle near a vital organ. But on the other hand, shame on you for not having clean water and first aid supplies!

8

Cheapest and easiest to grab natural infection preventative of all time ™

Honey

Seriously, kills bacteria and prevents their growth.

And if for no other reason than my tea in the morning. It’s something I take with me on any trip into the woods et al.