First Aid - Digestion & Food Poisoning
DIGESTIVE UPSETS:
Ask your doctor about a prescription of Paregoric* tablets for possible use
in quieting the system after a severe digestive upset.
Once the body has had the time to expel the causes. Infectious food carried
maladies thrive only in crowded area, not in bush.
So if you stop at any doubtful or overly busy eating places It would be wise
neither to drink water there nor to order cold nor raw food.
It would be best also to eat only meat that is well done all the way through.
Ground meat can be especially dangerous.
Safest choice are bottle drinks, black tea made on the spot with boiling water
INDIGESTION:
Use 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda in 1/2 glass of water, not to be repeated
more than 2 or 3 times a day.
And definitively not to be used habitually often helps to ease the discomfort
of acid indigestion & heartburn.
1/2 table spoon of baking soda in a glass of water will serve as mouth-wash
or a gargle.
Plain ordinary table salt, a rounded teaspoon in a quart of warm water taken
preferably on an empty stomach will serve as a purge.
CLEANLINESS & FOOD:
Cleanliness of eating utensils is very important. These should be washed immediately
after a meal & left exposed if possible to sunlight after washing it.
If there is any doubt about your meat being safe to eat then assume it's bad,
rather then take chances.
THE SAFEST WAY TO CARRY MEAT IS TO COOK IT PARTLY WHILE YOU KNOW ITS STILL
FRESH & SAFE.
Cooking will destroy harmful bacteria of decay, for a period.
Such items as mixed meat as sausages are best cooked before you leave home
& then carried in the fat in which they were cooked.
This will preserve it for 4 days to 1 week depending of the weather.
FOOD POISONING:
In severe food poisoning verging on collapse, one treatment is to wash out
the stomach with a weak solution of sodium bicarbonate, 1/4 teaspoon to a
glass of cool water. Drink 2 glasses of this right one on top of each other.
This may be vomited or it may pass right through. Sometimes nothing else is
necessary, except perhaps a restricted diet of weak tea & dry toast for
the next day. If troubles continue, it will be necessary to retard the intensity
of the bowel movement, so as to permit the building up of a concentration
of medication.
You do this with *Paregoric carried in your kit easily in form of tiny 10
minim tablets, of which a vial of 24 uses very little space. An adult may
take 2 or 3 tabs every 4 to 6 hours, for as long as the need continues.
If there was a moderate reoccurrence of diarrhoea after a 4 hours period,
one or 2 tab might do.
Your Doctor may suggest to include 2 or 3 dz. 1/2gr. tablets of Sulfathadine
or Sulfaguanidine.
You could take 4 tabs of either. The desired effect is of course, only symptomatic,
for Paregoric combats not the cause, but the digestive irritability.
Vomiting at the onset might pose a problem. The individual might be able to
hold down the initial dose of paregoric long enough for sufficient to be absorbed
to check the vomiting Otherwise the cycle could be broken by holding under
the tongue until absorbed a 1/4gr. Morphine Sulphate hypo-tablet.
The trouble itself could then be attacked by one of the largely non-soluble
*Sulfas.
Incidentally, the formerly widely recommended purge of Calomel or some similar
purgative is no longer approved, for taking a cathartic would be therefore
be sort of like whipping a jaded horse.
If the trouble continues, you might reasonably assume:
1) Either the medication is not hitting.
2) It hasn't reached the area affected.
3) There is not sufficient concentration.
Normally, 2 more tabs could then be repeated in 4 to 6 hours. If these still
don't act, 2 more could be repeated in another 4 to 6 hours. In the bush you
might give 3 or 4 tries then go to something else such as penicillin if available.
Once cured it is often well to stay on light ration such as weak tea &
toast for a day, while replenishing in repeated small amounts of slightly
salted water the often critically depleted fluid level of the body, dehydration
& salt depletion being major
