What fun swimming is! You can learn easily if you have a safe place and an older person to teach you the stroke. You can roll over on your back in the water, and float, and dive; but you must not stay in longer than twenty minutes, and not so long as that sometimes. As soon as you begin to feel chilly, come out. Swimming not only cleans your skin, but is splendid exercise for your lungs and muscles.
All this play out of doors will help your appetite, and that will make you ready to eat the right kind of food, and this food will get into your blood and keep your muscles firm and strong.
II. ACCIDENTS
I am going to tell you what to do in the case of some of the little accidents that may happen to anyone, and especially of the kind that children meet with in playing; but I don’t want you to stop playing for fear you’ll be hurt. Mother Nature can usually heal all the bumps and cuts and scratches that come from wholesome play.
You can, however, help her very much by keeping the scratch or cut perfectly clean. This is the chief thing to remember. Wash it thoroughly in clean water. Hold it under the pump, or faucet, and let the water pour down on it.
If you can, pour some antiseptic, or germ killer, over the cut, and wrap it up in a clean cloth. There is a medicine called peroxid of hydrogen, which is good for cuts and wounds, but an older person will have to put it on for you.
If the scratch is from a finger nail or the claw of a cat, or if the wound is the bite of some animal, you must be sure to have your mother or a doctor clean the wound with strong medicine. You see, nails and claws and teeth are, as a rule, dirty, and have on them germs that will get into the cut and make it swell and be very sore indeed.
THE TIGHT BANDAGE HIGHER THAN THE CUT
Sometime you may have a cut that is deep. You will see the bright red blood spurt from it. This means that you have cut one of the blood pipes called arteries. If the cut is on the arm or the leg, you should take a cloth or bandage and tie it tightly around the arm or leg above the cut; and if that does not check the blood, put a piece of stick under the cloth and twist the stick, as in the picture. For a cut like this you must get help as soon as possible, and keep quiet, or else you will increase the flow of blood.