Back when I was a caver (early 80's) I was trying to learn what sort of first aid might required. I had a buddy who'd been a medic in Nam, and he taught me the crude rudiments. Caving is bad, because you have to deal with 100% humidity, and endless mud and water-- kind of like a jungle only colder. When it got to dressings, suturing, and such, he said absolutely positively not. There was no way to insure there was not foreign material in the wound and closing it up could be a death sentence. The idea was to keep it open and clean until it could be dealt with in a sterile environment. I threw out the suture kit I had.
A few years later I was on a tubing trip unrelated to the caves and fell and managed to sit down hard on my left hand. I was okay, but I had a small nick on my left thumb. It stayed in the river water all afternoon, and I tended to it when I got home with the best I had from my kit. It healed in 3 days. Day 4 was no problem. On day 5 it went septic and I nearly lost the thumb. I'd been so good at getting the skin to heal over, and left some imperceptible piece of river muck down near the bone.
