How do you heal a wound?

by Greg Crowther

It is truly amazing how human (and other) bodies are able to repair themselves following an injury. This jingle is an overview of the process after the epidermis has been compromised. Some textbook authors divide this process into four steps, listed here.

CHORUS:
How do you heal a wound
When the epidermis breaks?
How do you heal a wound?
Four steps are all it takes...

Inflammation: there's clotting and there's swelling.
Migration: cells flock to their new dwellings.
Proliferation: for collagen production.
And scarring: with minor loss of function.

CHORUS

• karaoke

• MP3 (demo)

• music video

• sheet music (with melody play-back)

Songs like this one can be used during class meetings and/or in homework assignments. Either way, the song will be most impactful if students DO something with it, as opposed to just listening.

An initial, simple follow-up activity could be to answer the study questions below. A more extensive interaction with the song might entail (A) learning to sing it, using an audio file and/or sheet music as a guide, and/or (B) illustrating it with pictures, bodily poses, and/or bodily movements. The latter activity could begin with students identifying the most important or most challenging content of the song, and deciding how to illustrate that particular content.

(1) In the first step, which are the chief cells that release histamine and other chemicals that promote inflammation?

(2) Blood clots form mostly out of which blood-borne protein?

(3) Which specific cells migrate during the migration step?

(4) Which cells produce most of the collagen during the proliferation step?

(5) In what ways is the final healed tissue different from what it was like before the wound?

(Answers may be found on the answers page.)