Surely there was some domestic first aid, based both on the ideas of primitive medicine of each era and on superstitions, beliefs and popular advice, but except in the case of the powerful, most people managed as best they could when they had an accident or sudden illness, perhaps with a healer. No one knew what the disease processes were like, or what caused them, much less how the human body worked.
As for first aid, there are representations of the use of various bandages in Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquity. It is not without a sinister side that, after the battles, many times the ‘first aid’ was to give a merciful death to the wounded comrades themselves.
Historians locate the origin of first aid as we understand it today also in the army, when in 1870 the Prussian military surgeon Friedrich von Esmarch standardized care in the army that he called ‘erste hilfe’, first aid, from where the concept of first aid. This involved teaching the soldiers themselves to care for their wounded, primarily through bandages for bleeding and splints for broken bones. In 1872, a British hospital order started a system of medical aids and the first modern ambulances, horse-drawn carriages.
In 1878, the British surgeon Peter Shepherd and Colonel Francis Duncan first undertook the task of teaching first aid techniques to the civilian population. You have to think of a world before that moment, when there was not even a first-aid kit in the houses and nobody knew exactly how to deal with an emergency. The materials that are common today in homes to deal with small emergencies and, sometimes, not so much, and the techniques that we learn hoping never to practice them, began to evolve then.
bleeding: For many years it was taught that the preferred way to stop bleeding in the extremities was the application of a tourniquet, which constricts the blood vessels preventing blood loss. However, applied unskillfully and for too long, tourniquets can themselves cause serious damage. Using narrow items like ties or belts can be very cinematic, but it is not effective, a professional first aid kit tourniquet is about 4 centimeters wide and has a mechanism to tighten. Currently it is recommended to use direct pressure at the point of the wound, thus allowing the necessary clots to form to stop the bleeding.
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation: Even before Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, some scholars began to consider the possibility of using electricity to resurrect dead people. In 1872, physician Thomas Green described six successful resuscitations in seven cases of cardiac arrest. The precise principles of this technique, and its use to prevent fibrillation (irregular heartbeats) in the event of a heart attack, were standardized in the early 20th century, but it was not until the 1970s that the automated external defibrillator that today is used was developed. found in public places and that does not require specific training, it can be used by anyone because the device itself analyzes the state of the heartbeat and applies the necessary electricity.
Refering to
breathing, Already in the 19th century, attempts were made to restore breath to drowned people using a bellows, a system that is obviously somewhat abrupt. After several attempts to develop artificial respiration techniques, in 1956 Peter Safar and James Elam developed mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration, which combined with chest compressions (or external cardiac massage) developed by Dr. George Crile in 1903, allowed effectively sustain a person’s life even without devices such as a defibrillator. In 1972, people not specialized in health began to be given the necessary training to be able to apply cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR or CPR) in an emergency.
The Heimlich Maneuver: Choking by a foreign body is a common phenomenon, especially by pieces of food, toys and other small objects. In 1972 the common Red Cross recommendation for treating choking was to vigorously hit the choking person on the back. However, a doctor concerned about swallowing problems determined that this recommendation was not only unscientific, but there were reports of cases in which blows to the back caused the object to be embedded deeper in the airway. The same thing happened when trying to extract it by inserting the fingers in the patient’s throat or turning it upside down, as was usually done with children. From this, the physician, Henry Heimlich, developed what is now called the ‘Heimlich maneuver’, in which the inward and upward compression of the abdomen compresses the air in the lungs so that it propels the suffocating object outward. Since then, this technique has saved millions of lives.
From alcohol to hydrogen peroxide: A cut, burn or abrasion can be very minor, but it always opens the door to the possibility of infection, something that only began to be understood in the mid-19th century when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch established the theory of pathogenic germs. To prevent infections, the most widely used substance for a long time was alcohol, both ethyl and isopropyl, which diluted to 70% is a good disinfectant, but at the same time it can destroy tissues when applied to open wounds. Good options are hydrogen peroxide, povidone, polyvidone-iodine mixture, and chlorhexidine. Povidone is effective against all types of bacteria, fungi, yeasts, viruses, protozoa and spores, while hydrogen peroxide is effective against those infectious agents except protozoa, and alcohol is ineffective against some types of viruses.
The three ‘pes’
The objectives that all first aid actions must meet, according to professionals, are three: preserve life, prevent major injuries and promote recovery.
Although today we have the best medical care in history within our reach, it is worth taking care of ourselves and learning to take care of ourselves, to use our first aid kits correctly and to be prepared to give the doctors time to arrive and act. Knowing first aid is a social responsibility, we can say.