In case of apparent drowning the body should be stripped down to the waist, rapidly dried, placed on a flat surface with the head and shoulders raised a little, and hot bricks applied to the feet. Breathing should be imitated by raising the arms above the head and turning the body on its side; turn the body back on the face and press the arms down to the side. Do this about sixteen times a minute, and keep it up half an hour if necessary.
In case of a wound which bleeds freely, a distinction must be made between blood issuing from a vein and blood issuing from an artery. In the first instance, it will be nearly black, or at least very dark; in the second, it will be bright red and spurt forth. When from a vein, bleeding must be controlled by pressure below the wound, that is, farther away from the heart, while in the case of an artery, which is always more dangerous, immediate pressure must be made above the wound on the line of the artery between the wound and the heart. A pebble rolled up in a handkerchief and tied around the limb, with the stone directly above the artery, and tightened by twisting a stick in it, is a good rough-and-ready means to stop bleeding. Sometimes a pad should be placed between the handkerchief and the artery.
Anything that excludes the air, such as wheat flour, or olive oil, or boiled linseed, or grated raw potato, is good to spread over a burn. If any considerable surface is burned the patient is in great danger, but small burns are rarely fatal, although they may be very painful. The best application of all is linseed oil and lime water.
Scurvy is a disease that is very much to be dreaded whenever fresh meat and vegetables are scarce. It is now thought to be a condition of acid-poisoning, and the remedy is alkaline salts, such as carbonate of soda or carbonate of potash. Lime juice is also an anti-scorbutic. In cold weather a diet of almost exclusively fresh fat meat will keep off scurvy.
Pneumonia is usually most fatal in crowded camps, where the men do not get a sufficient amount of pure, fresh air.
CHAPTER X.
DYNAMITE.
Dynamite should be stored in a magazine which must be dry, cool, and well ventilated. Bricks are best, but when built of wood, the frame should be covered inside and out with boards allowing the air to have free circulation between the walls, so that the inner wall may not be heated by the sun.
Do not store your caps with your dynamite.
If powder was well made, it is as good a dozen years afterwards as it was on the day it came from the mill.
Most accidents occur in thawing dynamite. Dynamite freezes between 40 and 45 degrees Far., that is, 10 degrees above the freezing point of water, and although it does not explode, if heated slowly, until 320 degrees Far. is reached, yet the quick application of dry heat may explode it at 120 degrees Far. This makes it so dangerous, for a stick of powder hot enough to explode under certain conditions may be held in the hand with little inconvenience. Powder should be thawed by placing it in a water-tight vessel and the vessel set in hot water. It should never be placed on or under a stove, or in an oven, or on a boiler wall to thaw out, as is so often done by the unthinking. Frozen dynamite is especially liable to explode from heat quickly applied. Nevertheless, reckless men will continue to blow themselves to pieces by foolhardy carelessness.