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Actually, alcohol is no longer recommended for direct use on wounds. It can damage the surrounding healthy tissue, cause the area to experience excessive dryness, and increase the recovery time of the wound. The best way to clean a wound is to use warm soapy water or saline to flush the wound out.
Funnily enough, this also follows the same route as drinking alcohol. Alcohol used to be recommended as a remedy to illness (typically as some form of tonic), but our modern understanding suggests it is harmful in that regard, as we also now understand for its use in wound care (though the difference is that rubbing alcohol is technically better than doing nothing as it does lower risk of infection, but washing with warm soapy water is much better).
we are trained in first aid and give a +1 to that!!! plus its very very pain and ouchie
alcohols are funny. when describing what they are chemically and their toxicity, the question of “what about drinking alcohol” always comes up, and it is fun explaining how ethanol is toxic as well! intriguingly, in the NFPA 704 classification system (basically those little yellow, blue, and red “hazard” or “fire” diamonds), ethanol is classed as more toxic than even stuff like acetone, which has a generally more “chemical-like” reputation, or some other alcohols like isopropanol, a.k.a. rubbing alcohol.
of course, these classifications have their limits. while the general toxicity may be lower, acetone is NOT fun if you drink it. off the shelf isopropanol can also have many other far more hazardous substances contained in it. drinking alcohol still absolutely is toxic too!
the normalization of it in society has always been super interesting to us in general. we don’t really object to it, but the habitious consumption of a de-facto toxic substance fascinates us greatly, even when done so in a minimally hazardous manner.
tangents aside, thank you for bringing that up :)
