First aid in illness and injury; Medicine, Popular
First, get your patient into camp if he is away from it. That may be
done in the following manner, which will also illustrate how to carry a
person injured in any manner: take a blanket and lay it at full length
on the ground; place a pole two feet longer than the blanket directly
in the center and fold the blanket over it; lay a similar pole in the
center of the folded half and fold the free side back over; place your
patient on top, and two men can carry him as comfortably as though he
were in a litter. It is, in fact, an emergency litter.
Another emergency litter may be constructed by buttoning an overcoat
its full length and running two poles down the sides, laying the
patient between them. Failing an overcoat, two short coats or Mackinaw
jackets may be made to serve.
Having got your patient with the compound fracture into camp, cut
off all clothing from the wounded limb, but no more. It is a bad
plan to remove too much clothing from badly injured persons. All the
warmth must be conserved, even to the extent of applying artificial
heat. Examine the wound for foreign matter and carefully remove it,
especially bits of clothing, leaves, small sticks, and bits of earth.
While you have been thus engaged, water should be heated in the
cleanest, brightest vessel the camp affords. If there are none bright
enough, one may be sterilized by burning it over a hot fire for at
least ten minutes. It is absolutely essential that the water used to
cleanse a wound of this character should be sterile—that is, without
any germ life whatever; hence the directions for boiling it.
In another clean vessel boil all the cloths, towels, and other
dressings that you intend using. Any soft cloth will do for dressings,
provided it is sterilized and sterilization consists only in thorough
boiling.
One of the articles I shall mention in a very limited surgical kit is a
bottle of tablets composed of bichloride of mercury known as Bernay's
tablets. They are made by all chemical houses and vary in form, but all
contain about the same quantity of the antiseptic agent. Some are white
and some blue in color, the blue being preferable.
One of these tablets dissolved in a quart of water makes a solution of
about the proper strength for dressing wounds. Make your solution and
with your sterilized cloths wash out the wound thoroughly, and that
does not mean to let a little water flow over the wound; it means to
remove every particle of foreign matter in and about the wound.
If the bones have stuck into the earth, as is quite often the case,
they must be exposed and the narrow canal cleaned. Then replace the
bones in as nearly their proper position as possible. Do not attempt
to "set" the bone; just put it back fairly nearly in line. Then cover
with several layers of moist cloth that have been previously boiled and
dipped in the bichloride solution.
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