Yeah but clearly people wouldn’tve been doing it if it hadn’t worked, so what is the reason for trying that specific traditional method?
Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
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Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#12Yeah but clearly people wouldn’tve been doing it if it hadn’t worked, so what is the reason for trying that specific traditional method?
Without being overly condescending, you do realise that most of the things that have been done throughout history, along with many we still do, are the result of cultural practice and have no evidence base whatsoever? Whilst 1956 seems to be a fairly late date to stop what would seem in the surface to be a counter intuitive practice, 80 years earlier blood letting was still in vogue
people still pray to personal gods to this day, expecting them to prioritise their petty little lives while others are suffering/dying of things that could be trivially solved with a bit of knowledge and technology.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#13Yeah but clearly people wouldn’tve been doing it if it hadn’t worked, so what is the reason for trying that specific traditional method?
> people wouldn’tve been doing it if it hadn’t worked That's a bold claim!
Yeah. Maybe someone who got rubbed with snow got randomly better completely unrelated to the treatment and then superstition run wild with that coincidence.
Or maybe people understood initially that you should do the rubbing next to a fire. And then the rubbing only has positive efect because it lets the person administering it feel when the heat is too much, and naturally adjusts the distance to prevent burns or injury from too fast warming up.
Or maybe someone told people to do it because they thought it might help and never bothered to check if it does anything or not.
Or maybe people did know it does nothing but there was no other option and doing something about the injury felt better than doing nothing.
Maybe it was doing mechanically nothing but the care and personal touch had a beneficial effect due to placebo.
Maybe it made the injury worse, thus more likely that they amputated and paradoxically that saved the injured from worse outcomes like gangrene.
There is so many other possibility than “if they did it it must have worked”. Who knows.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#14I believe the logic is to heat gently through friction, and to promote blood circulation through manipulation.
Warming up cold body parts is painful, so maybe it's about distracting from the pain as well.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#15I believe the logic is to heat gently through friction, and to promote blood circulation through manipulation. Warming up cold body parts is painful, so maybe it's about distracting from the pain as well.
Yeah it's extremely painful. I jumped into a frozen lake years ago and ran to a shower afterwards. Turned on the water, just slightly warm and it felt like my fingers and toes got smashed by a hammer.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#16Yeah but clearly people wouldn’tve been doing it if it hadn’t worked, so what is the reason for trying that specific traditional method?
> people wouldn’tve been doing it if it hadn’t worked
Now do trepanation and corpse medicine.
Like, look around you. We’re a stupid species. Not consistently. But a lot. We’ve always been a bunch of apes banging around.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#17One thing to keep in mind, is that if somebody is hypothermic and not just frostbitten, then rapid re-warming is a bad idea.
Body protects itself by shutting down blood flow to skin and extremities, keeping the core warm. So if the extremities are rapidly re-warmed, then blood vessels in them dilate. And then blood starts flowing through oxygen-depleted tissues that are cold and full of accumulated metabolic waste.
Not a good combination, and you might end up with organ damage as a result.
Gradual re-warming instead gives the body time to slowly clear the waste as blood flow re-establishes itself.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#18Perhaps it got started with people misunderstanding / misremembering drying off by rubbing snow on wet skin. Being wet in cold conditions can be a death sentence so you need to dry off quickly, and this is one of the recommended methods.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#19I believe the logic is to heat gently through friction, and to promote blood circulation through manipulation. Warming up cold body parts is painful, so maybe it's about distracting from the pain as well.
Yeah it's extremely painful. I jumped into a frozen lake years ago and ran to a shower afterwards. Turned on the water, just slightly warm and it felt like my fingers and toes got smashed by a hammer.
Some spas have this if you’d like to mimic it mildly. Aire in London has a very cool pool from which you can go to a very hot pool. I really enjoy the pins and needles effect.
Re: Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)
#20I believe the logic is to heat gently through friction, and to promote blood circulation through manipulation. Warming up cold body parts is painful, so maybe it's about distracting from the pain as well.
Yeah it's extremely painful. I jumped into a frozen lake years ago and ran to a shower afterwards. Turned on the water, just slightly warm and it felt like my fingers and toes got smashed by a hammer.
A friend was a Vietnamese POW. The first torture done was to tourniquet his upper arms until they colored to black and then loose the bindings (repeatedly).
Returning circulation is much more brutal than it might sound.