SPIDERWEBS are a wonder of the natural world and can be truly spectacular to look at and possess unique properties.
They are extremely flexible and lightweight yet can be as strong as steel. Thanks to these properties they make an excellent home, food trap and larder for your friendly house spider, but apparently in the past people have found other uses for it as well.
Is it true that spiderwebs were once used as bandages?
Verdict:
TRUE
As shocking as it may seem, this is not science fiction or something cooked up for a comic book.
In ancient Greece and Rome, doctors used spiderwebs to make bandages for their patients.
They would first clean the wounds with a combination of honey and vinegar and then cover it up with balled-up spiderwebs.
As long as the web was clean, it apparently would not cause any infection or aggravate the wound’s condition at all.
This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Recent studies have shown that spiderwebs are rich in vitamin K which is essential in helping blood to clot.
A study in Pakistan in 2017 using mice found that spider silk when applied to a wound accelerated the skin reconstruction process and significantly reduced the wound surface area in 14 days compared to over 20 days of natural untreated healing.
Also, spider silk has antimicrobial properties so it can help keep wounds clean and prevent infections.
These unique properties have not gone unnoticed by scientists, and bandages made of spiderwebs might actually be making a comeback.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Nottingham announced in 2017 that they had developed a technique to produce chemically functionalised spider silk that can be tailored to applications used in drug delivery, regenerative medicine and wound healing.
They used E.coli bacteria that was genetically altered so that it can synthesise the special spider silk.
However, they are only at the preliminary stages of research and a finished treatment is still several years away.
So until then, maybe it's best to just stick to plasters with a bit of disinfectant and leave the creepy-crawlies alone.
References:
https://www.loredohands.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://www.psu.edu/news/
https://
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-
