Tears As Emergency Disinfectant?

Over here there is a recurrent belief that, if no other means of cleaning a wound is available, tears can be used as an emergency disinfectant due to its cleaning and antiseptic properties. It seems tears contain molecules called "lysozymes" that can fight off bacteria and prevent infection. What are your thoughts on this?

 

That is very interesting and helpful information. If you do cut yourself you may cry for the pain and can use the tears then to wash the wound. But what if no one cries? I think then that you have to use some of the water supplies or find a stream nearby. It means making sure that you put some water in with the medical box. Or at least some TCP or chemical that would disinfect the wound.

 

Interesting indeed. According to the legend, the WW2 soldiers used tears due to the lack of medical supplements. But unless we're in a war then other means are usually safer and guaranteed to work better.

Hahaha, Jokes apart that's great info. I will keep that in mind for future reference.

 

From all the things your body can produce, saliva is one of the good things as well. Saliva helps with coagulation. It surely wont help if you have a big cut wound, but for minor cuts saliva can help your blood coagulate around the cut area faster and prevent further bleeding.

 

Bleeding is a healthy body's method of cleaning a minor wound....it bleeds a little, clots then heals. If a wound is more serious it may not stop bleeding without compression, if so use a clean cloth. Truthfully crying on it, pissing on it, licking it etc. is more likely to introduce. Infection then to clean the wound

 

Cobwebs also induce clotting LW these hedgerow methods really do work.

 

Sphagnum moss would be okay to use but I don't think I would like to use pee or cobwebs. Surely the urine would have bacteria. It is a body waste product and not good for consumption and I thought, would not be good to put on a fresh wound either. I would use saliva as it is white and so it gives the appearance of being cleaner. It's all in the mind though, as saliva can also be riddled with germs.

 

I am interested in this thread, never thought that tears could be used for such applications. I should also add my fifty cents worth of contribution by saying that good old lime, in this case slaked lime or hydrated lime quickly stops alone from oozing from a wound. Its good to have some in accident proof areas.

 

Yup, it was a recurrent story passed from generation to generation around here. I mean whenever we accidentally touch our eyes tears roll down aye? So it makes sense stating that tears possess disinfectant properties. To what extent they could be used in a survival situation as an emergency disinfectant, however, that's another discussion.