AGRICULTURAL NEWS - Horses are prone to injury, and all horse owners or carers should therefore know how to clean and disinfect a wound, says Dr Mac.
Two thousand years ago, horse owners cleaned their animals’ wounds with seawater and honey.
The reason for the success of these ingredients as a wound treatment is osmosis, which is the movement of water across a semi-permeable membrane to equalise the concentration of molecules.
The concentration of salt is higher in seawater than in most bacteria; in the same way, the concentration of sugar is higher in honey than in the surrounding environment.
Living cells, including bacteria, generally have a higher concentration of molecules than the surrounding environment, so water moves into the cell.
