Thursday 9 January 2014

1st Survival Summer Course - Basic Survival Medicine - Final Part of the Personal Hygiene

Welcome once again to the 1st Survival Summer Course I've started reading myself last Summer. Why have I decided to call it a Summer course when we are deep involved with Winter moods? Because considering the rate I can actually write, it will take me to next Summer to finish posting all the important information. But this offers you the opportunity to digest the info and try the practical tools yourself before jumping to the wild attempting by all means necessary the craziness of being completely lost while a famine bear and a pack of wolves hunt you down.

I'll be very short today, I promise. The page I am now reading concerns the last bit of information covered on the matter of personal hygiene: 1) Keeping your teeth clean and 2) Taking care of your feet.

1) Image yourself lost in a jungle trying to survive not only the excited horny violent monkeys but also the germs accumulated in your mouth, the ones that putrefy the bits of food your tongue can't reach. How do you get rid of them when you haven't got a toothbrush? Easy, you do one. And you do with by finding a twig that is at least 20cm long and 1 cm wide. Then you chew one end of the stick to separate the fibers (just like you see in the figure) that will end up brushing your enamel. You can also wrap a piece/strip of cloth  around your fingers and rub your teeth with it, thus wiping the food particles away. Couldn't be easier!


Cavities you may have can be filled with substances that won't easily suffer redox reactions, e.g., candle wax, but only after you've picked all the particles from the cavity.

2) Never open blisters as only intact blisters are safe from infection (burst blisters should be treated as open wounds). Just apply a paddling material around the blister to relieve pressure and reduce friction. if you wish to get rid of the blister immediately then have a needle and thread at range, both sterile, clean the blister and then run the needle and thread through it (just like in the image below), detach the needle and elave both ends of the thread hanging out of the blister for absorbing the liquid inside. This will reduce the size of the "wound", increase aeration and avoid the hole closing up again. Finally, pad around the blister.


Next week will cover medical emergencies. So if you're a fan of A&E in the wild, come and visit the blog.

1st image taken from an Arabian website, God knows the url... there were so many characters I am not familiar with and when I tried to copy they ended up in numbers and symbols.

2nd image taken from Run with sole, Blisters, [http://www.runwithsole.co.uk/tag/needle/], last visited on the 09th of January 2014.

No comments:

Post a Comment