A very important a part of manhood has all the time been about having the competence to be effective on the earth — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you end up in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing certainly one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you may hone your manly know-how week by week.

Tourniquets exist in a category of medical techniques related to wilderness survival and military medicine primarily because they’re only utilized in drastic, uncontrollable circumstances. Whether on the battlefield or some distant peak, a tourniquet is commonly the one method to stop excessive bleeding to severely injured limbs. Using a strip of material, belt, or other material, tourniquets constrict blood flow until the wound will be attended to by medical professionals.

During World War II, tourniquets were used heavily in the sphere, but because soldiers often had to attend hours on end to be seen by surgeons and medics, their constricted limbs suffered nerve and tissue damage that forced amputations. The perceived relationship between tourniquets and amputation caused them to fall out of use for a long time, but research that emerged from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan showed that, when used appropriately, the advantages of tourniquets far outweigh the risks, especially in circumstances where patients can receive proper medical care inside just a few hours of their application.

The underside line is that when blood loss from a limb injury risks death, a tourniquet is a lifesaving technique that can’t be ignored.

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