First Aid
Scott Mclean
I’m touching on the health and eating changes that have been happened over the years. Salt. They tell you now to minimize your salt intake.
The Food network, which our dog enjoys, shows contestants being told by top chefs that they need more salt. These same chefs are shown on other shows sprinkling a veritable snowstorm of salt over food. Maybe doctors need to prescribe “No cooking shows!”
They used to encourage you to use more iodized salt for iodine in your system. I remember Mom starting to just sprinkle salt in her frying pan because she was told it made a healthier, less greasy hamburger. She had a hard time cutting back on salt.
Unfortunately, you can find about 37 kinds of salt in the store now. I understand sea salt but pink Himalayan salt? Is it mined by Yetis?
Remember butter on burns? Even some of the ointments back then were oil based but now they know it drives the heat in farther.
At one time, most peoples first aid supplies were bandaids, hydrogen peroxide, and either iodine or mercurochrome. Remember that stinging junk that colored your skin somewhere between yellow and red? No going to the doctor for stepping on a nail.
Fancier first aid kits had what they called smelling salts but was actually ammonia. Guaranteed to snap your head back.
A cold was treated with a mustard plaster or honey mixed with lemon juice. Vicks vaporub was also a must.
These days backpackers are never without a water filtration system due to giardia and the like. We drank right out of mountain streams and rivers a lot. I remember my parents stopping along Chinook or White pass to let us get a drink from a trickle coming over the bank. Hell, we kids sometimes drank out of irrigation canals and ditches! Our systems must have been immune to the various junk in water back then from constantly drinking it.
We all got our various vaccinations back then and we kids particularly enjoyed the one for polio because it came in a sugar cube. These days there is an anti-vaccination movement. Our parents did not object to the vaccines because they had seen the effects of some of the actual diseases.
Being kids, the only cleanup after something disgusting like a cow crap fight was usually just rinsing off your hands in the nearest sprinkler, water hose, or cow trough. The first two also doubled as drinking fountains.
We were a little rough and tumble but somehow survived. Maybe if I had been more careful with my actions and health my legs would work right. Who knows. I enjoyed my wild and wooly childhood!
See you later.