First Aid - Tropical Dangers

MOSQUITOES AND MALARIA:
Here are some more preventive measures:
1) Establish your camps on high ground far from swamps.
2) Sleep under a net or any kind of tissues.
3) Soil your face with mud, specially before sleeping.
4) Wear all your clothes specially at night.
5) Stick your trousers inside your shoes or boots.
6) Kerosene and gas and alcohol drive away most mosquitoes.
7) Mosquitoes & black flies are attracted by dark colours such as black, red, blue, dark brown. So wear white or yellow. Jeans attracts them.
Wear clothes with long sleeves & tight fitted at the neck & wrist, ample large clothing give better protection.
8) Mosquitoes, bugs etc. are attracted by perfume, eau de cologne, soap & shampoo which are perfumed. The most efficient repellent are those containing "dithyltoluamide". Orange or lemon peel rubbed on skin helps repelling bugs.
9) Calamine or a paste made of bicarbonateof soda mix with water makes a good remedy.
10) Ammonia is what's best for all sort of stings. (Note: Meat tenderiser is good too!)

TROPICAL DANGERS, ANIMALS & INSECTS ETC.:
But what of wild animals? People exposed to jungle conditions are scared of lions, tigers, elephants & other big games although unless you go out of your way to provoke them, the danger from this quarter is very small. In the dense jungle, say the survival experts, you can live more safely today than in most large towns.
All accounts show that of the airmen who spent any time in the jungle during the war & were then rescued, hardly any came across a beast of prey.

THE REAL DANGER OF THE TROPICS ARE INSECTS.
Many species carry parasites & spread epidemics, & are thus a greater menace than a whole zoo of wild animals turned loose.
In 1939 for ex. only 200 people in the whole of India were killed by tigers while 4 millions died of typhoid. The number of people who died by wild animals during the past few hundred years is probably smaller than the number of malaria deaths in a year.
So the survivor in the tropics is more likely to succumb to an infectious disease or blood poisoning than to hunger, thirst or attack by wild animals.
He MUST therefore take great care of his health and to do everything to protect himself from insects.
By all accounts the worst of the diseases they spread is malaria, which is carried by mosquitoes. Quinine.*

AVOID MOSQUITOES & MALARIA PREVENTION:
How to best avoid mosquitoes for instances:
NEVER pitch your camp near swamps, the breeding places of mosquitoes.
USE your mosquito nets, use the ointments in your kit, take off as few clothes as possible.
To help your body, change your shirt every time you make a halt, carry the first one upon a cross stick to make it dry.
Doing this way, Baden Powel avoided malaria, while all others got it in a 4 months jungle tour. Just by changing his shirt every halt.
Survivors on the coast were driven further in the jungle to avoid loosing too much blood from mosquitoes bites. They had neglected to cover their faces and top of their body with MUD.
MUD BEING THE SIMPLEST PROTECTION AGAINST MOSQUITOES.

OTHER TROPICAL PLANT TRICK: **
North American Indians were first called: RED-SKIN, it was not the colour of their skin as of the clay they wore to protect themselves from the sun and of the mosquitoes bites.
Mud often mixed with burned cow dung's or the dung of water buffalo is used with great success by natives of the Tropics. It also helps to rub certain oils from coconuts or lemon grass.
Coconut oils is used by the natives of tropical islands to protect them against head lice and so is tobacco juice.
While the NATIVES of New Guinea & New Caledonia rub lime juice into their hair. This makes their hair turn red, but castaways from the west who have tried it out, say its as effective as
modern synthetic preparations.

TO KEEP OFF FLIES & BUGS, the natives in the Philippines take
breadfruits to bed with them.
The inhabitants of New Guinea rid themselves of ants by storing lemons in damp places, till the fruits is covered with mould. Then they quarter the rotten fruit & put them on the tops of anthills. The ants clear off at once, and NEVER go back there.
Many tropical ants live in the branches of certain trees, so one should sleep neither in a tree nor on bare ground.
In fact trainees at Stead Survival Army camp are told how to construct a bed several foot above the ground.
They are also warned to keep their shoes ON, at night, and ALWAYS be careful where they put their hands.
To get rid of another Tropical worm, the human Botfly; which you notice by a small lump like a result from an insect bite which however persist & gets larger.
The lighted cigarette is useful but required lot of skill, a more routine method was to cover the worm hole tightly with adhesive tape, the worm dies in 24 hours and then is squeezed out easily.
Other survivors have reported that a favourite spot for fleas to settle and lay eggs was under the toenails; they could only be scraped out with a sterilised knife, after which the wound had to be treated at once with iodine to stop an inflammation.
One survivor of the Burma campaign recalled that Mites also settled in our skin around our hips.
They caused terrible itching, but we knew we MUST not scratch. We covered the place with iodine & the itch gradually stopped. AHHH!
Of course there are a great many other Tropical insects & parasites, which can't be listed here.
But these few example will show that survivors have often been able to protect themselves by simple methods (like tobacco juice & lighted cigarettes) & have also taken great care to avoid inflammations.

FOR IN TROPICAL HEAT EVEN THE SMALLEST SCRATCH CAN TURN VERY QUICKLY INTO AN UGLY WOUND.
Cases of blood poisoning are quite common, although natives are seldom affected by this.

FLEAS:
They can be very dangerous, often carry diseases even plague after having eaten dead plagued animals.
If you MUST eat wild animals or rodents and that you suspect plague to be in that region, suspend the animal as soon as killed & let it cool off before manipulating it.
FLEAS don't stay on cold body. Fleas drown in water so a good wash will get rid of them. If you suspect a place to have fleas, wash it completely, fleas run away from dampness.

TICKS:
There are of 2 kinds, found specially in Tropical and subtropical regions often carry chronic fever and typhus. Don't try to get it out with your fingers, the head will stay inside your skin causing lots of pains.
TO REMOVE IT, apply oil or damp tobacco, you can use the heat of a match, cigarette, hot charcoal or hot water.
You can expose your skin to the smoke of a fire of green wood, you will see the tick getting out of the skin then just remove them.

JIGGERS, MOTH, MITES, LICE: (*see above mud also)
Jiggers are lice in formation & will crawl their way into your skin, causing much itching, & many other diseases.
If you scratch you risk to contact other infections, a salted bath will get rid of jiggers etc. To get them off your clothes, exposed them for a long time to the smoke of a fire.
Native villages are often plagued by lice, so avoid to get into their huts or in body contact with the natives if at all possible.
When pricked by a lice etc., avoid to scratch because you will spread the lice waist into your wound. It is by the infection from the lice's waist that man contracts typhus chronic fever.
To get rid of lice if you don't have the right powder, you can boil your clothes, if impossible then spread it under the sun specially the lining for a few hours.
If you have been in contact with these insects, wash with soap if you can. If no soap then sand from water ways (rivers etc.) are acceptable. Examine often the hairy part of your body, which are
the "hot" spot for them.

BEES AND WASP ETC.:
The bites can be dangerous even fatal. If attack by a swarm of them throw yourself in the nearest thickest bush. Bees will loose their dart in the skin, you MUST take it off to avoid infection.
Wasp & hornets however can sting many a times. To lower the pain, apply mud, wet clay, damp tobacco or wet salt. A compress of ammonia or yeast paste will do best. Vinegar is good too.

SCORPIONS:
Even though dangerous, the scorpion's bite is rarely fatal. Yet they represent a real danger since they hide in clothing, shoes or sleeping bags. So shake well your clothes before getting dress, if you get bitten, apply cold compress & mud.

LEECHES:
Found in Borneo, Philippines, Australia, South Pacific, different parts of South America. They cling to grass, leaves etc. so they can attach themselves to the wanderers.
You take them off with the tip of a burning cigarette or a match, hot coal or application of wet tobacco or with proper insecticide.

SNAKE BITES:
Nearly all snakes will bite. If non-venomous the bite MUST be washed, cleaned & treated as ordinary wound. If you are not an expert better treat it as if it was a venomous one.
1) Avoid running, because the venom runs faster to the heart.
2) Stay calm but act quickly.
3) As much as possible, immobilise the affected part in such way as to be under the heart level.
4) On the bitten limb, at 2 or 4" form the bite,tighten lightly an improvised tourniquet.
If swelling progress upward, stop its progression by getting the tourniquet (garrotte) higher.
The tourniquet MUST be tight enough to stop the blood flow in the surface veins, but without stopping the arterial pulse.
5) In less than 1 hour, make one incision only with a (sterilised knife, razor blade etc.) just above each wound left by the hooks.
This "cutting MUST be parallel to the bite & MUST NOT exceed 1/2" long by 1/4" in depth.
6) If you have a suction pump from a snakebite kit use it on the wound to suck the venom, if not then use your mouth to suck, then spit off frequently the blood and other liquids coming off.
The snake venom is inoffensive into the mouth unless you have a wound inside. Even then the risk are very small. Before letting off the tourniquet (garrotte)*, you MUST operate the suction for
at least 15 minutes non-stop.
7) If after a time, the patient doesn't feel dryness & stiffness in the mouth, of any headache, of pains or swelling, it means the venom was not toxic.
8) If its the contrary then it means: toxic, so keep doing # 5.

BAD BURNS or BAD WOUNDS WHEN ONE CAN DRINK:
Make him drink a solution made of 1/2 table spoon of salt with 1/4 tea spoon of soda bicarbonate mixed in 1 pint of cold water. Make him drink as much as desired, yet excluding any other kind
of liquids. NEVER use hot water it provokes vomits. Or use this mixture: 1 teaspoon of *#chlorure de sodium# with 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda mix in 1 litre of cold water.
The victim MUST drink it very slowly for 1 hour, if he feels nausea, stop it so that he doesn't vomit. Keep this mixture for him at later time. Such a mix re-establish the salts & liquid lost by the system.