One prominent example is superglue, which started being used by medics in the Vietnam War to control bleeding until a soldier could get to a hospital. Now you can buy special medical versions of the stuff at any drug store.
But beware that closing up a wound increases the chance of infection, so only do this if you're sure that you've been able to sterilize the wound first or if there is no other option for stopping the bleeding.
Otherwise it's best to leave the wound open and wrapped with bandages, and make sure to change the bandages at regular intervals.
https://www.amazon.com/QuikClot-Advanced-Clotting-Kaolin-Str...
Be sure you know how to use it before you need to use it though.
A study related to that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18712606
In my mind use of a medical device such as this type of gauze should be the subject of a risk/benefit analysis, where the risk is potential for burning in some cases versus the risk of bleeding out. If you've got a cut that isn't pumping arterial blood then you can probably rely on the body's own copious clotting agents to stop the bleeding. However if the patient is likely to bleed out, then it may be better to use quikclot gauze or similar, because the choice is "die from blood loss" versus "receive some burns."
A different calculus might apply in cases where you're not in the backcountry because the medical response speed is much faster. I wouldn't assume that search and rescue has a response time less than 6 or 8 hours, and if the conditions are especially shitty and you're far enough away from a trailhead it might be a day or two before you can expect rescue. From what I understand it can take an hour or two before the SAR people in my area are even headed toward their base. From there it could be another hour or two before they can mount a response, and then there's time spent in transit and time spent searching for you.
Under those conditions it shifts the mental calculus from solutions that will work for less than an hour toward solutions that will work for hours or days. So it's probably better to take a burn that won't get much worse instead of an arterial bleed that will kill you in less time than it takes for SAR to start driving to the chopper from wherever they're on-call at.
It was a two-part formula, combining a treated applicator like a cotton swab and a bottle of adhesive.
You had a cut, you put a drop of liquid from the bottle onto the end of one of the swabs and touched it to the cut on your finger or wherever. The two parts together formed the adhesive.
It instantly secured the skin together.
It was the BEST. It would fix a paper cut immediately and securely. You would not accidentally dribble adhesive and stick your fingers together.
They pulled it from the market, for some reason shrouded in mystery.
Now all you can find is nexcare nu-skin which is not very good at all. (Basically it sort of covers your skin, but doesn't secure anything)
very sad.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/20...
https://www.amzn.com/B00006IDL4
They basically all agreed the original worked very well.
they're still available online, albeit rarish, but they're very convenient.
I'm not sure if there's an official "medical powdered mashed potatoes" that doctors use.
If you purchase liquid bandage in a drug store, it is just sterile CA glue.
Pro-tip: you don't need to put the CA glue inside your wound. Squeeze your wound together, put the CA glue on either side of it on your intact skin, then place a piece of thread across the wound, fasted to the skin on both sides with the CA glue. The effect is a do-it-yourself suture without needing a needle.
And YES, it's exothermic with the thread. So obviously don't use a lot of it. Use the absolute bare minimum and don't attempt it with wounds severe enough that a lot would be required. If you slather on the glue than slap a patch of denim over the wound, you're going to get burned badly. Don't do that.
I always just use a single-ply piece of paper tissue, and soak that in the glue. It's too thin to hold much glue, so it doesn't get that hot - if you need more strength, you can add more layers. And it can be applied one handed - place tissue over wound and apply glue. Done.
According to medical literature, people regularly ingest superglue without any issues (mostly children). They even put it in their eyes accidentally (it turns out that it's a bad idea to store your nail glue in the same drawer as your eyedrops, especially with impaired vision) without any damage aside from a few days of discomfort.