Never mind stitches—it is possible to solder wounds closed

IF YOU CUTETH yourself, your options are to reach for a plaster or, if the cut is nasty, to go to a doctor to have it stitched or glued. That seems a rather limited choice. Medical researchers have been trying to develop another way to join the edges of a wound, inspired by something routinely done to gas pipes and electronics: soldering. And an innovation developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology () in Zurich, in co-operation with the Swiss materials-science institute Empa, suggests this might soon become a practical reality.In soldering, an intermediate material is heated until it melts and bonds with the two surfaces that are to be joined. The material of these edges has a higher melting point and remains solid (otherwise it would count as welding).