[ANON POST] Swords and major hand injuries

[kutsuwamushi]

Hello wonderful Little Details community. I'm writing a story set roughly in Dark Age Europe (ish). In a desperate situation, a fellow very unfortunately shoves a sword blade aside with his off hand and manages to slice his palm open right down to the bone. I'm assuming this will cause some major and quite possibly irreparable damage to the nerves/

Comments

[rhiannon_s]

To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, when something needs surgical precision to fix, you are really in for a bad day when "surgical precision" means "to within an inch or so then cauterize the stump where the limb used to be".

[anonymous]

He is indeed in for an exceptionally bad day, poor guy. :)

[anonymous]

OP here.

Profoundly damaging is fine - I count on it, in fact, because the fact that his hand is more or less wrecked figures into the plot. It's the specifics of the damage I'm not sure about. How an injury like that would affect his ability to pick things up, for example - I'm assuming that since the thumb-side of his hand hasn't been slashed open he'll be able to pick up lightweight stuff, but he won't have any power gripping ability. I could be wrong on that, however, which is why I'm asking. With any luck there's a hand surgeon on here somewhere. :)

I've got a plan for how to deal with the infection issue - and there's low-grade magic, so I can also handwave it a bit. But I'm hoping to keep at least some token realism as far as the long-term damage goes.

[profbutters]

I'm not a hand specialist, but the first thought I had was "how big is this sword?"

My instinct, if it were me, would be to shove it away so that the blade rotated and tilted away from my face, and that would probably mean a big cut on the mound under the thumb.

Have you tried these guys? http://www.thehaca.com Somewhere on the site there are videos with the results of slices, cuts, and stabs on a side of beef. Don't be put off by "Renaissance"--the resources show info on Viking swords, too.

EDIT: looking at the forum, there's an entry on sword injuries, including a list of modern sword injuries. A lot of severed thumbs. So, yeah--my guess would be, if he still had fingers, the damage would be more likely to the thumb side.

[profbutters]

Thanks, that's a briliant resource both now and in the future!

[sollersuk]

Long term? My late husband, before he met him, put his hand through a car's headlight. It severed nerves and tendons; he never regained 100% use of it, and the nerve damage meant that, even after repair, sensation was badly screwed up

[sollersuk]

Basically what I'm picturing with the nerve/tendon damage. Thanks!

[benbenberi]

Also to bear in mind, early medieval ("Dark Ages") swords generally didn't have terribly sharp edges -- they were more useful for heavy chopping than slicing. So there's a strong likelihood your guy's getting some hand-bones mashed in the process, not just a clean(ish) cut to the soft tissue.

I would guess that, if he doesn't get a serious infection and die, he's probably not going to have much use of the hand at all in the future. Certainly nothing that would involve any gripping or dexterity. If he's very lucky he'll be able to move and straighten his fingers, but I wouldn't count on it. Definitely not normal sensation, and there will probably be scars/contractures (& bone deformities if they got broken) that impede any useful function.

[syntinen_laulu]

A strong likelihood, yes, but not a certainty. If he doesn't stop the whole power of the blow, but manages to deflect it, slap it aside, he might escape with "only" cuts to the soft tissue and no breaks.

[sollersuk]

Er... this is the era of pattern welded swords, which had extremely sharp edges which were effectively steel. And there are skulls from that era with slices cut off them.

[benbenberi]

Thanks! Good point about the scarring itself impeding movement. I imagine his fourth and fifth fingers are probably well and truly screwed, since those are the ones most connected to the ulnar nerve and the tendons on the outside of the hand. That would in turn play havoc with his grip strength and dexterity, as you say. I'm just not sure about his other fingers, or even his wrist/arm, since all those muscles and nerves and tendons are connected.

[tarvae]

a friend a good few years ago 'zigged when he should have zagged' doing a re-enactment display with blunt weapons and having made the additional blunder of fighting in leather gloves as he'd forgotten his steel gauntlets (there may have been a hangover involved in this double blunder but he's never admitted it )

he took a blunt weapon to the hand and it broke all four of the fingers within the hand itself, index and middle were just broken, ring and pinkie were smashed. He's got pretty good movement and grip but the outer fingers are definitely misshaped and easily damaged now.

Supports analysis that outer edge of hand gets most damage, with a sharp weapon I'd expect as much bone damage, along with tightening of the skin accross the hand from scarring so even best case scenario would be a hand that was at less than 50% function and if there is an infection that's 'healed' he's likely to have real trouble after from internal scarring even without tendon/nerve issues.

[tarvae]

Ouch!

That's helpful, thanks. Do you think there would be that kind of bone damage even if the sword got slapped aside on the backswing, when it's not moving very fast?

[tarvae]

Probably not as much bone damage - would guess broken rather than smashed, also quite possibly index/middle might not get too much force, but would depend a lot on how hard your guy pushed and the part of the blade he impacted with

[tarvae]

Thanks. The advice about the ruler is really good - I feel like I should have thought of that!

I tried to describe the scenario I'm envisioning in a little more detail below. Let me know if you have any thoughts?