Before I forget, I should ask if everyone here got the memo about freckles. Hopefully there’s nobody who is still beleaguered by these horrid things. I’d hate to think that any of my gentle audience has a deformity such as this. (WARNING: Not safe for viewing by the delicate!)
That poor, disfigured woman.
Anyway, here’s a general public service announcement about two very dangerous things and how to deal with them:
I take the proactive approach of throwing puppies into wells to check for death-gas. Win-win.
I’m still attached to my computer, so I suppose I should add another tidbit. I just discovered this scandalous image near the very beginning of the book: Cliff Dwellers
Take a close look at that picture. You can clearly see an actual, unclothéd, honest-to-god, boob! An undeniable tit! It even has a nipple. Actually there are two boobs, and we can infer a second nipple.
I am as scandalized as I am titillated. This is almost as good as digging through stacks of old National Geographic magazines and finding photos of topless natives. (Don’t judge.)
I wonder what it has to say about brandy. A few months ago I read the whole Sherlock Holmes’ novels and stories back to back and it seemed to me that the whole extent of Dr. Watson’s first aid techniques was to give some brandy to the victim.
Smeghead is speaking in tongues again!
Quick! look the chapter about home made exorcisms!
Hello again, everyone. I hope you all had as small-pox-free a weekend as I did. If not, you may find this useful:
I don’t know why you’re supposed to add water twice. I guess the Guide likes water.
Lemon Brandy for felon? How elementary! I like it.
But as discussed earlier in this thread, the Guide doesn’t say much about alcohol, and what it does say isn’t very positive. So it cannot (or at least does not) recommend you a brandy. However, it does have quite a bit to say about first aid.
Indeed, it has such a large amount to say about first aid that I may need to break this up into multiple posts. Let’s begin with bleeding. Unlike an earlier topic in this thread, this post is about how to stop bleeding.
With healthcare costs rising at alarming rates, it’s good to know that my dryer and / or belly button can supply me with a cheap and effective medicinal agent. But we’re nowhere near the end of this topic. Light your pipe or inject some cocaine; we’ve a long way to go yet.
“Hemorrhage from the lungs is always alarming” has joined “More and more the Americans are becoming known as a bathing people” as a sentence I try to work into everyday conversations.
There’s still a lot of ground to cover. I may need to start editing. I don’t like to leave much out, but once you eliminate the banal, whatever remains, no matter how quaint, must surely be interesting.
As you may have guessed, the Guide does not stop there. Its wisdom is not limited to the alarm of lung hemmorhage nor to the prudence of physician consultation regarding gun shot wounds. We continue on with Unusual Emergencies.
“… coffee cannot be readily secured.” Can you imagine such a world? Truly we’ve come a long way since 1900. That’s not all the Guide has to say about treating poisoning. The very next page addresses the subject in detail, leading me to question just how “unusual” this all was.
I hope you’re all paying attention. Imagine your embarrassment should a woman pass out in your vicinity, and you forget to lay her down, loosen her clothing, and apply mouth-to-mouth. Observers might think you lack good breeding.
Also, the keen-eyed among you will have noted that hard cider is an effective treatment for accidental ingestion of strong alkalis. (Although even here, the Cyclopedia is careful to recommend caution with regards to alcohol.) It’s not Doctor Watson’s brandy, but it’s close.
As you may have deduced, there’s even more to come. The next topic we will cover is “Foreign Bodies in Ear, Nose, or Throat.” Unfortunately, this will have to wait until tomorrow. I know this is dangerous, as it may occur that one of you will befall some accident which will lodge an item in your ear, nose or throat, and yet lack the knowledge of what to do. I can only offer my apologies, and hopes that any accidents you encounter result only in poisoning and gun shot wounds.
Today, we learn how to deal with emergencies resulting from an object stuck in an ear, nose, or throat. Parents of young children will find parts of this section extremely relevant.
You’ll note that the items suddenly begin being numbered partway through, starting with “3. Choking”. That’s not a mistake on my part. They’re just suddenly and inexplicably numbered that way in the text. (They aren’t numbered on one page, but on the other side of that page they are. There are no missing pages; just missing numbers.)
Also, what you do in the privacy of your homes while choking is your business. Me? I’m sticking with Heimlich.
But there’s a common class of emergency we haven’t even considered yet: Burns.
Next we begin to tread old ground. I’ve already mentioned, in passing, how to deal with a broken bone. (See post #71.) But if the shoulder-bone is the broken part, you should “place the arm on the injured side across the chest, the hand touching the opposite shoulder, and fasten it in place by passing a broad bandage around the body.” If, instead, it’s your ribs that are the problem, then I hope you know where your towel is at - “Fracture of the Ribs.- In fracture of the ribs pin a towel around the body until the doctor comes.” Finally, there’s a short description of how dislocation, simple fracture, and compound fracture differ. “Hot applications” are recommended for dislocation if a doctor cannot be had immediately.
There is still more information falling under the broad heading of “first aid” contained in the Cyclopedia’s burgeoning pages of knowledge. But we’ve covered a lot of ground already, and some of it starts to blur from “first aid” into “home remedies for cholera” and such. Also, we’ve already seen what to do about mad dog bite or exposure to death gas in a mine. So I’ll just cover a few more sub-topics, the first one very short:
Only now do I realize that I’ve already uploaded a picture of this section! Apparently I scanned it for the amusing picture, then uploaded it and forgot about it. Anyway, here it is:
Wow, it’s interesting to see which parts of first aid haven’t been improved upon, and which ones are totally different.
That page about how to remove stains might actually be helpful to me… my toddler came home from daycare last week with her brand-new clothes covered in “washable” paint, that isn’t. (Note, never send a toddler to daycare in brand-new clothes.) Not sure what citric acid would be exactly (or where to buy it I suppose) but I didn’t try ammonia on it… off to ask The All-Knowing Google about c.a.
No questions answered tonight. Instead, I give you this brief parlor recitation.
clears throat
From page 56, just before the pages about why so many people die before their time, we have the following:
Well, that’s a bit of a downer. Let’s recite something a bit more uplifting. From page 52, under the heading “Charity, Happiness, and Length of Days” we have these bits of verse from authors you may have heard of:
I admit I have no idea what “may gang a kennin’ wrang” means, but it’s got a beat and you can dance to it.
The last three recitations come from the section titled “Woman”. Let’s start with a stirring rendition of:
catches breath while the servants distribute refreshments
My penultimate performance tonight is simply titled “Mother”:
pauses briefly for the gentle applause I’m sure to receive from my audience
This last entertainment for the evening requires a brief introduction. Quoting from the Guide:
And so we close tonight’s entertainments with this classic bit of verse:
bow
Interestingly, this appears to be a bastardized version of the original. Or maybe the author didn’t want to violate Wallace’s copyright.
