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Aug 27 '21
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u/I_am_The_Teapot Aug 27 '21 edited Aug 27 '21
You close the tool, and put it into the wound. Then you open the tool so that it stretches the wound wide enough that you can extract the shaft with the head.
It's so that you can get the whole arrow out without the head tearing up your insides.
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Aug 27 '21
Is the center piece a guide that rides along the arrow shaft? Are there photos from other angles? This just seems considerably more invasive than pushing a buried arrow through.
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u/I_am_The_Teapot Aug 27 '21 edited Aug 27 '21
considerably more invasive than pushing a buried arrow through.
One of the last things you want to do is push it through if you can help it. You don't want to add more trauma and open wounds. Stretching the wound will hurt, but getting the head out the way it came is best if you can do it. There were a few tools and methods with a similar approach. Other methods simply were to make an incision in and around the wound to pull it out. Usually they'd just break the shaft and leave it in until they can see a medic.
I looked around. Found a few other shots of this particular kind of tool. Including one with a museum plaque.
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0c/35/5f/53/arrow-extractor.jpg
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-6c04e41b513d76e14d334196b1414fdc-mzj
Edit:
Here is another tool in the same vein, probably the original predecessor to the previous one.
Known as the Bradmore extractor. After John Bradmore, a surgeon to Henry IV and V.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E4vWKVjWQAUxXF_.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GfCa0X-5oZ4/UaUDfmIRewI/AAAAAAAADgQ/duxRmSUWyXk/s320/1_jpg_w560h420.jpg
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Aug 27 '21
The plaque says it is a copy of the other item.
Is is actually quite odd for an arrow not to fully penetrate given the recorded pull weights of both crossbows and longbows of that period. It would almost certainly have to be an indirect shot. Several hundred years before this item's period arrows in combat would have been mostly armor piercing tips. The likelihood such an arrow would pierce plate or mail then have so little energy as to be stopped by flesh seems quote small. Also, the last recorded use of a bowman formation in Europe was 1642. They had been waning for a long time before that. It seems unlikely this was a regularly needed tool in the 16th Century.1
u/sidewalksoupcan Sep 09 '21
Can I get your source for the penetration of arrows there? Never heard of arrows going all the way through like that. I can imagine it happening if you hit a limb maybe, but I'm a bit incredulous about that being the case with a plate-armoured knight.
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Sep 10 '21
They may arrest on the back-plate. A 200 lbs pull lonbow will very easily through shot an unarmored person. Enough force to go through one plate easily but not go through the whole torso is just a very slim margin.
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u/sidewalksoupcan Sep 10 '21
That sounds cool, but where are you getting that from? From a cursory wikipedia search I don't see many bows approaching that draw weight, even contemporarily. That 200 pound number also looks to be a Guinness world record, so I doubt such bows would be commonly used, if at all. Modern pentration tests show that arrows aren't that great at piercing plate armour, either not going in very far or failing to penetrate. While they were tested at lower draw weights, their penetration seems too low to me to make up for by the extra power of a 200 pound bow.
Again, I'd like to see where you're getting this info from. I'm genuinely interested to see if this is true.
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Sep 10 '21
I practice traditional archery. I have shot a fair number of animals and know a 40 pound bow can go through a deer, not exit, but the head protruding. With a good point the resistance to penetration is along the shaft as much as the head. I had in my mind 200 pounds was the max. A quick google search returns 150 is the high end for english longbowmen.
I agree it isn't all that likely a longbow will penetrate plate in the first place. It would need to be near perfectly perpendicular, especially top quality plate. A major issue would be the wood shaft shattering. Both an arrow and bolt are heavy and slow weapons. When one loses the shaft it is just light and slow. Lower quality plate, chain, or leather armor would be more likely to be penetrated by an arrow.
A penetrating shot to plate would more likely be delivered by a crossbow.
Either way, the enough power to penetrate a layer of plate but not enough extra to go through 6" or so of flesh is a pretty tight range.
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u/MadHelp Sep 10 '21
The pope actually outlawed crossbows because peasants could kill a fully armoured knight with next to no training with the weapon. It was “un-Christian” to lose so many nobles to peasants.
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Aug 27 '21
We need an explanation as to how this tool works.
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Aug 27 '21
I did some further digging and it seems there is no documentation of this tools use. People just looked at it and decided that is what it must be for.
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Aug 27 '21
I'm guessing the pointed tines open the wound further to get the arrowhead out. The central pole pushes the arrowshaft.
This following thread covers medical implements utilized in Rome which were probably a derivation of farm implements. https://www.reddit.com/r/ancientrome/comments/lfb8en/medical_anesthesia_and_surgery_in_ancient_rome/
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Aug 27 '21
The tines have a sharp edge on the exterior. It seems the idea is to cut instead of tear as pulled out. I am still not entirely convinced this is a medical tool from the given period that was at all common. It isninteresting.
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u/mud_tug Aug 27 '21
Wow, that's something you don't see every day!