I think I've read that superglue was invented in WWI for exactly this purpose.
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.
If you need to control bleeding quickly you can also use hemostatic gauze which contains a clotting agent such as kaolin clay. The gauze can be used to pack arterial wounds where a tourniquet can't be used. I keep a pack of it in my backcountry first aid kit in case someone's bleeding from an artery and I can't get a tourniquet on it, which sometimes happens when the artery retracts into the body after a cut.
Yeah. I am not a doctor, but I do have some limited first-aid training. I'm not advocating that everyone should use this type of gauze. But I was pointing out that in the case of severe bleeding this gauze would be better than simply closing the wound and hoping for the best. In fact, during my training I was told that you don't want to close an arterial bleed, because the artery will simply continue bleeding copious amounts of blood into the (now closed) cavity.
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.
Those burning clot agents aren’t used anymore (at least in the US/Israel/Europe.) I just did a trauma refresher with the Stanford trauma center and that very question came up. That study you referenced is 10 years old. The new stuff doesn’t burn.
Except that bandages fall off when you're working, especially if you're working on something dirty. Whereas super glue holds a cut shut even if you're covered in oil. Or, if the cut is on a finger, super glue allows you to keep working as if you aren't even cut.
Superglue / cyanoacrylate wasn't discovered until the 1940s. They were trying to create clear gun sights when they discovered the fact that it sticks to everything. My understanding is that it wasn't used in the field to close wounds until the Vietnam war.
Nowadays they have blood clot kits you just pour into the wound. It solidifies very quickly stopping most external blood loss but has to be surgically removed by the attending physicians.
If you need to clot a wound and have only common household products, ground black pepper and coffee grounds make for excellent temporary scab substrates.
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.