A Handbook of Health

by Woods Hutchinson

Snake-bite is one of the rarest of all accidents and not one-fiftieth as dangerous as usually believed. Not more than one person in twenty bitten by a large rattlesnake will die, and only about two in a hundred bitten by small rattlers or by copperheads. The average poisonous snake of North America cannot kill anything larger than a rabbit, and any medium-sized dog can kill a rattlesnake with perfect safety. Our horror-stricken dread of snakes is chiefly superstition. Of those who die after being bitten by North American snakes, at least half die of acute alcoholic poisoning from the whiskey poured down their throats in pints; and another fourth, from gangrene due to too tight bandaging of the limb to prevent the poison from getting into the circulation, or from pus infections of the wound from cutting it with a dirty knife. Alcohol is as great a delusion and fraud in snake-bite as in everything else; instead of being an antidote, it increases the poisoning by its depressing effect on the heart. If you should be bitten, throw a bandage round the limb, above the bite, and tighten as for a cut artery. Then make with a clean knife two free cuts, about half or three-quarters of an inch deep, through the puncture, one lengthwise and the other crosswise of the limb, and let it bleed freely. Then throw one or, if there be room, two or three other bandages round the limb, three or four inches apart, and tighten gently so as to close the surface veins by the pressure, without shutting off the flow in the arteries. After thirty or forty minutes loosen the first bandage to the same tightness and leave it so unless the heart weakens or faintness is felt, in which case tighten again. If this be done, there isn't one chance in a hundred of any serious result.

How to Avoid Drowning. In case of falling into the water, the chief thing to do is to try to keep calm and to keep your hands below your chin. If you do this and keep paddling, you will swim naturally, just as a puppy or a kitten would, even if you have never learned to swim. It is, however, pretty hard to remember this when you go splash! into the water. Everyone should learn to swim before he is twelve years old; and then in at least nine times out of ten, he will be safe if he fall overboard. Remember that, if you keep your mouth shut and your hands going below your chin, you can keep floating after a fashion, for some time; and in that time the chances are that help will reach you. If you can reach a log or apiece of board or the side of a boat, just cling quietly to that with one hand, and keep paddling with the other. Even if you can get hold of only quite a small limb or pole or piece of a box, by holding one hand on that and paddling with the other and kicking your feet, you will be able to keep floating a long time unless the water be ice cold. If you can manage to keep both your feet splashing on top of the water and both hands going, you can swim several hundred yards.

THE NEW METHOD OF ARTIFICIAL BREATHING

Devised by a celebrated physiologist, Professor Schaefer of Edinburgh, and now being adopted by life-saving stations and crews everywhere.

You may sometime be called upon to save another person from drowning. In such a case, as in every emergency, a cool head is the chief thing. Make up your mind just what you are going to do before you do anything,—then do it quickly! If no one is near enough to hear your shouts for help, and no boat is at hand, if possible throw, or push, to the one in the water a plank or board or something that will float, and he will instinctively grasp it. If you are thrown into the water with a person that can't swim, grasp his collar or hair, and hold him at arm's length, to prevent his dragging you under, until help arrives, or until you can tow him to safety.

Boys and girls, after they have learned to swim, may well practice rescuing each other, so as to be prepared for such accidents.

Artificial Breathing. The best way to revive a person who has been under water and is apparently drowned, is to turn him right over upon his chest on the ground, or other level surface, turning the face to one side so that the nose and mouth will be clear of the ground. Then, kneeling astride of the legs, as shown in the picture, place both hands on the small of the back and throw your weight forward, so as to press out the air in the lungs. Count three, then swing backward, lifting the hands, and allow the lungs to fill themselves with air for three seconds, then again plunge forward and force the air out of the lungs and again lift your weight and allow the air to flow in for three seconds. Keep up this swinging backward and forward about ten or twelve times a minute. This is the newest and by far the most effective way—in fact the only real way—of keeping up artificial breathing. It is very, very seldom that any one can be revived after he has been under water for more than five minutes,—indeed, after three minutes,—but this method will save all who can possibly be saved.

So perfect a substitute for breathing is it that if any one of you will lie down in this position upon his face, and allow some one else to press up and down on the small of his back after this fashion, ten or twelve times a minute, he will find that, without making any effort of his own to breathe, this pumping will draw enough air into his lungs to keep him quite comfortable for half an hour.

Don't waste any time trying to pour the water out of the lungs. As a matter of fact there is very little there, in drowned people. Don't waste any time in undressing, or warming or rubbing the hands or feet to start the circulation. Get this pendulum pump going and the air blowing in and out of the lungs, and if there is any chance of saving life this will do it; then you can warm and dry and rub the patient at your leisure after he has begun to breathe.