Scouting, Volume 1, Number 9, August 15, 1913 Page: 5
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SCOUTING.
FIRST AID AS A SCOUT FEATURE.
riany Instances Show Value of Efficient Training.
THE MIND OF A BOY.
CERTAINLY one of the most pic-
turesque elements of the Scout
work, First Aid is also one of the
most useful. Every day new instances
of quick wit and resourcefulness come
to our attention. The cases are not al-
ways spectacular, but very often the
training and promptness of a lad of
fourteen have avoided serious conse-
quences after some trivial or more dan-
gerous accident. The Boy Scouts of
America have attracted a great deal of
favorable comment in the past year for
their knowledge of first aid, and in many
instances real heroism as well as re-
sourcefulness has been shown.
Take the instance of 15-year-old Scout
Guy Beacon, of Medford, Ore., who
had been shot in the right leg. The boy
was in an isolated part of the country
and might have bled to death, but being
a Scout he went to work without hys-
teria or bungling, stopped the flow of
blood with a tourniquet and bandaged
the leg scientifically. He then rode a
horse five miles to the nearest telephone
and called his father and a physician.
However proficient they may be, the
Scouts make no claim to be amateur
doctors, but give only such treatment as
is within their power and as soon as
possible turn over the case to a physi-
cian. However, medical aid is some-
times delayed, as in the instances of
the Scouts at the Inauguration, when
the ambulances, along the line of march
were often busy just when they were
needed most. A Washington boy, Leroy
Harris, was able to take entire charge
of treatment for two cases. As Com-
missioner E. S. Martin tells it:
"He found an exhausted mother with
an ill baby on the afternoon of March
4th and administered the proper treat-
ment to both before an ambulance and
a physician arrived. The Scout took the
baby and its mother into an office on the
avenue and, after examining the baby
found it suffering with colic. He pro-
cured a box of mustard and mixing it
with hot water on a handkerchief, made
a mustard plaster, which he placed on
the child's stomach. He then treated
the mother for exhaustion and when the
ambulance arrived they were both in
condition to be taken to the rest sta-
tion."
Instead of the natural feeling of un-
certainty and confusion which ordinary
boys would have in the face of sudden
emergency, a Scout's quick wit can often
do much to remedy conditions as well
as to help any injured. A member of a
troop in Easton, Pa., was thus able to
forestall serious .consequences when he
discovered a bad gaspipe leak which had
tilled a house with fumes and overcome
three people. The Scout opened all the
windows and gave first aid. He then
hurried to the nearest telephone and
communicated with the gas company,
thus enabling them to send experts to
repair the dangerous leak. Later, offi-
cials of the company called him up to
compliment him on his quick wit and
prompt action.
Tn many places Boy Scouts who have
proven their efficiency in first aid work
are permitted special privileges by police
and firemen. At Coatesville, Fa., they
are allowed to pass beyond the fire lines.
Recently, at Flint, Mich., Scouts and
neighbors were helping to rescue furni-
ture from a burning house. A foreigner,
who had volunteered his aid, kicked out
a window to put some heavy articles
through it. He was wearing low shoes
and the falling glass cut an artery in
his foot. One of the Scouts saw him
stagger, and as he was assisted from the
house, prepared bandages and with the
aid of his companions made a tourniquet
and stopped the bleeding. When the phy-
sician arrived he said that without first
aid work the man would have undoubt-
edly bled to death.
In far-off Hawaii, doctors are not al-
ways so easy to reach as they are in the
large American cities. Scout Commis-
sioner Wilder reports that in one case of
arterial injury medical aid did not arrive
for an hour, but a Scout's knowledge of
wound-dressing kept the wound from be-
coming dangerous.
Animals are often the recipients of
first aid attention on the part of thought-
ful Scouts, and many a mongrel has been
as assiduously bandaged and cared for as
if he were a prize winner. Improvised
soap-box splints and handkerchief ban-
dages serve at the operation and the re-
sult is a perfectly set leg instead of a
badly healed one. After watching such
an instance recently a bystander said:
"Those lads could have set a man's*leg
as well as a dog's."
A Scout in Tucson, Arizona, when he
fell from a high swing at an amusement
park, met with injuries that needed quick
action. His fellow Scouts restored him
to consciousness and bandaged the severe
cuts about his head and shoulder so that
when the ambulance arrived he was
taken directly home.
In the summer the large proportion of
deaths by drowning is appalling. Scouts
are taught two methods of resuscitation
and their knowledge has saved life times
without number. As early as May of
this year, several instances had come
to attention, among them an especially
heroic rescue performed by Scout Hall
Ivey, of Altus, Okla. During a Sunday-
school picnic he swam out into deep
water when a boat overturned, and al-
though the girl who was thrown into
the water was much heavier than he, he
succeeded in bringing her to the shore
after she had gone down a second time.
Then the Scout had sufficient strength
to apply his first aid knowledge and
with the help of others restored the girl
successfully. This is a specially notable
case, as the boy had not yet passed his
second-class examination, but was well
up on advanced first aid requirements.
When we read that in parades where
Scouts were detailed for first aid duty,
several had as many as sixteen cases of
fainting, one took care of fourteen cases
and a broken arm, and twice when doc-
tor and ambulance were delayed cases
of epileptic fits vere adequately handled,
we realize that a little preparation on
the part of the boys can go far toward
preventing serious casualties or illness.
Relief work, often precludes the neces-
sity of first aid and at the Inauguration
ceremonies hundreds of cases might
have been taken to hospitals had not the
Scouts been continually on the look-out
for opportunities to help along in any
way.
An Incident Illustrating the In=
fluence of an Idol.
WARREN A. SLEE, 13 years old,
lay sick for weeks, and accord-
ing to a Washington dispatch,
physicians said they did not think he
would recover. Then the lad went into
delirium and talked of Walter Johnson,
the "speed king" among the pitchers of
the American League. He had been the
boy's idol, the man of men before whom
this lad had stood secretly in awe," and
when the mind was free the idol of his
worship spoke to him.
When the team came back to Wash-
ington from its Western trip a member
of the boy's family had intuitive sense
enough to seek out the pitcher and tell
him what the doctors said. Naturally
Mr. Johnson wanted to go to the child's
bedside, but the physicians said no, that
the excitement would be fatal.
So he wrote this letter and it was
read to the boy in an interval of de-
lirium :
"My dear Warren: I take pleasure in
sending you herewith one of the baseballs
used on our Western trip and hope that you
will soon have the opportunity of using it
with your friends."
Pills, powders and surgery had failed,
but an idol worked another miracle. As
if touched by the gods of old there was
an immediate change for the better, and
on Saturday it was said that Warren
will soon leave the hospital and be able
to use that baseball. The primitive mind
had been allowed to work.
Many distinguished writers have tried
in vain to describe the psychology of
miracles such as these. Kipling and his
"Brushwood Boy," Kenneth Grahame
and his "Golden Age," they have es-
sayed to explain the mind of boy, but
it cannot be done. All that we know is,
as Thackeray says, that every boy at
a stage in his life has some idol. Of
course the idols change, eventually be-
coming feminine. Yet if our learned
uplifters would seek to learn the name
or nature of each boy's idol, and work
through it, instruction in moral hygiene
and eugenics would become obsolete.
That way progress lies. If an idol can
save a life it can do other things, for
it represents the boy's ambition at its
best and most impressionable period.
And what matter the form the idol
takes? It may be, as it often is, a loco-
motive engineer, a drum major, a base-
ball pitcher; through the hero worship
of these exalted beings the boy's salva-
tion lies. Text books on biology were
never intended for the primitive mind.
—New York Sun, Aug. 11.
In Memoriam.
It is with sorrow that we received
notification of the death of Assistant
Scout Master J. Walter Murphy, Troop
No. 2, Welsh, W. Va. Scout Murphy
succumbed after a short illness of
typhoid fever on August 1 and was
buried from the home of his father at
Black Wolf, W. Va., August 3. His
troop attended the funeral.
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 1, Number 9, August 15, 1913, periodical, August 15, 1913; New York, New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth282639/m1/5/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.