One Good Tourniquet...
Mysteries of the Unexplained pg. 63
One June night in the 1930's Allan Falby, captain of the El Paso County Highway Patrol, was
in hot pursuit of a speeding truck in El Paso County, Texas. The truck
slowed to take a corner, and Falby rammed into it at full speed. The
collision ruptured an artery in his leg, and if Alfred Smith had not stopped to give him first aid he would almost certainly
have died. As it was, the tourniquet that Smith applied stopped the blood flow and an ambulance reached Falby in time to save
his life and his leg. After several months in a hospital, Falby was well
enought to return to his job.
Five years later Falby was again working the night patrol when he
received a radio message to assist at a t bad accident on US 80. A car had smashed into a tree, and the man
was in critical condition. Falby arrived at the scene before the ambulance and found an unconscious
man in the car; he had severed an artery in his right leg and was bleeeding to death.
Falby applied a tourniquet and managed to stop the bleeding. Then he stared
at the victim: it was, of course, Alfred Smith.
"It all goes to prove,"Falby said later,"that one good tourniquet
deserves another.".
