Post by spence on Jun 27, 2019 17:47:03 GMT -7
Interesting thread, it's always good to learn what others do, and why.
I’ve never carried a first aid kit on my treks. I doubt the old boys did, or could. My treks are always short, not far from the car, and I always have my phone with me. I figure I can handle any health problems without a simple first aid kit as well as with. So far, so good. Now, if I were going on an extended trek/hunt where I would definitely be out of touch and far from help, I would approach the problem differently, and think of something much more adequate than a simple first aid kit.
Several years ago I made a bad stroke in using my flint and steel and sliced the back of my left middle and ring fingers wide open. Bled, as they say, like a stuck hog. I rooted in my kit and came up with the tow I was using for wadding, wrapped the fingers in it and held pressure for several minutes until the bleeding slowed. I had a piece of deerskin in my kit for patching moccasins, so I wrapped fresh tow tightly over the cuts, then wrapped that snuggly with the buckskin in order to keep pressure on it, tied it all down with a leather thong.
Finished my lunch and went back hunting. Didn’t catch the turkey that day. A good cleaning and bandaging at home, and the wounds healed perfectly with no complications.
In 1766 James Smith walked from the mouth of the Tennessee river in western Kentucky to Fort Chiswell in western Virginia, about 420 miles as the crow flies. As I would expect, he had no first aid kit.
“About eight days after I left my company at the mouth of the Tennessee, on my journey eastward, I got a cane stab in my foot, which occasioned my leg to swell, and I suffered much pain. I was now in a doleful situation__”
“All the surgical instruments I had, was a knife, a mockason awl, and a pair of bullit moulds__ with these I determined to draw the snag from my foot, if possible. I stuck the awl in the skin, and with the knife I cut the flesh away from around the cane, and then I commanded the mulatto fellow to catch it with the bullit moulds and pull it out, which he did.”
"I ordered him to search for Indian medicine, and told him to get me a quantity of bark from the root of a lynn tree, which I made him beat on a stone, with a tomahawk, and boil it in a kettle, and with the ooze I bathed my foot and leg---what remained when I had finished bathing, I boiled to a jelly, and made poultices thereof. As I had no rags, I made use of the green moss that grows upon logs, and wrapped it around with elm bark: by this means (simple as it may seem) the swelling and inflamation in a great measure subsided.”
Smith died of natural causes in 1813.
Spence
I’ve never carried a first aid kit on my treks. I doubt the old boys did, or could. My treks are always short, not far from the car, and I always have my phone with me. I figure I can handle any health problems without a simple first aid kit as well as with. So far, so good. Now, if I were going on an extended trek/hunt where I would definitely be out of touch and far from help, I would approach the problem differently, and think of something much more adequate than a simple first aid kit.
Several years ago I made a bad stroke in using my flint and steel and sliced the back of my left middle and ring fingers wide open. Bled, as they say, like a stuck hog. I rooted in my kit and came up with the tow I was using for wadding, wrapped the fingers in it and held pressure for several minutes until the bleeding slowed. I had a piece of deerskin in my kit for patching moccasins, so I wrapped fresh tow tightly over the cuts, then wrapped that snuggly with the buckskin in order to keep pressure on it, tied it all down with a leather thong.
Finished my lunch and went back hunting. Didn’t catch the turkey that day. A good cleaning and bandaging at home, and the wounds healed perfectly with no complications.
In 1766 James Smith walked from the mouth of the Tennessee river in western Kentucky to Fort Chiswell in western Virginia, about 420 miles as the crow flies. As I would expect, he had no first aid kit.
“About eight days after I left my company at the mouth of the Tennessee, on my journey eastward, I got a cane stab in my foot, which occasioned my leg to swell, and I suffered much pain. I was now in a doleful situation__”
“All the surgical instruments I had, was a knife, a mockason awl, and a pair of bullit moulds__ with these I determined to draw the snag from my foot, if possible. I stuck the awl in the skin, and with the knife I cut the flesh away from around the cane, and then I commanded the mulatto fellow to catch it with the bullit moulds and pull it out, which he did.”
"I ordered him to search for Indian medicine, and told him to get me a quantity of bark from the root of a lynn tree, which I made him beat on a stone, with a tomahawk, and boil it in a kettle, and with the ooze I bathed my foot and leg---what remained when I had finished bathing, I boiled to a jelly, and made poultices thereof. As I had no rags, I made use of the green moss that grows upon logs, and wrapped it around with elm bark: by this means (simple as it may seem) the swelling and inflamation in a great measure subsided.”
Smith died of natural causes in 1813.
Spence