A tail worth telling.

Toward the end of the Civil War. The South was so befret of supplies due to the blockades and overall cost of the effort that everything was in short supply. The silk thread used for surgery had almost disappeared.  Enterprising Southern surgeons had took to boiling hair from horses tails to make it supple enough to use. The boiling had a two fold effect. It made the hair easier to handle as well as to make it sterile. This cut post op infections and caught the attentions of the physicians who then made the jump between boiling material and lack of infections. Which lead to sterilization of surgery tools.
                                                                  Think of that........