Why did this work?

Yesterday afternoon, I got a thorn in my finger. It was a really nasty splinter that I was digging at with a needle and trying unsuccessfully to remove with tweezers. I gave up, hoping my husband could remove it when he got home from work.

He tried, but it was very painful. I snatched my hand away. He went to look on the Web for alternative methods of splinter removal. One that was advocated was to put duct tape over the end of your finger for half an hour.

So I did it. This morning the splinter was out of my finger and stuck onto the duct tape.

How and why did that work? I was sure that it wouldn’t.