Also 7 turneke, 8 turniket, tournequet. [a. F. tourniquet, dial. torniquai, deriv. of tourn-er to TURN.]
1. A surgical instrument, consisting essentially of a bandage, a pad, and a screw, for stopping or checking the flow of blood through an artery by compression; also, a bandage tightened by twisting a rigid bar put through it.
1695. W. W., New Lt. Chirurg. Put out, 53. His … slacking the Turneke … caused such an additional Expence of Blood.
1721. Naish, in Phil. Trans., XXXI. 227. Upon slackening the Turniket.
1756. Gentl. Mag., XXVI. 381. The offender is … strangled by putting a cord twice round his neck, and twisting it tight with a piece of stick behind, like a tournequet.
1806. Med. Jrnl., XV. 149. Remarks … on the screw tourniquet.
1869. Latest News, 10 Oct., 7. He strangled himself in bed with a tourniquet made of a handkerchief and a piece of stick.
1877. Erichsen, Surg., I. 34.
attrib. 1767. Gooch, Treat. Wounds, I. 443. When such a wound happens in a limb, the leaving a tourniquet ligature loose about it,… till the Surgeon can be called, is a precaution.
1820. Sporting Mag., VII. 108. The tourniquet [hand] shake is the next in importance.
2. a. A turnstile. rare. b. BARKER’S MILL (Ogilvie, 1882).
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Tourniquet, a Turn-Still.
1768. Sterne, Sent. Journ. (1775), I. 56. Seek some winding alley, with a tourniquet at the end of it, where chariot never rolled or flambeau shot its rays.
1876. Ruskin, Fors Clav., lxiv. VI. 113. We … are to work outside, here, for your dinners, and hand them through the wall to you at a tourniquet.
