Part 14

You have perhaps seen jointed dolls. The strings and rubber bands on their joints help to make them move; but the dolls don't act as if they were alive. They have no telephone system to tell their bodies how to move.

If you will stop and think how many "moves" you make in a day, you'll know how hard your muscles have to work. They'd be quite tired out if they did not have plenty to feed on all the time and did not rest at least nine hours a day. I told you how the food is melted and carried about in the blood. It is the blood that brings the muscles their food and keeps them alive and makes them strong enough to move the joints and the bones.

What does all this playing do for you? It makes you grow not only big, but strong, too. What puny little things you'd be if you couldn't get out and run and play and make your muscles strong and your nerves do just what you tell them to do.

I know of ten or twelve little chickens that hatched a few weeks ago. There are so many cats about, that the poor little chicks have to be shut up in the barn all day. At first they ran and played and jumped on their mother's back, but now they hump their shoulders and hang their heads and don't seem hungry and look sad and sick. They are not so big as some that hatched later. Can you tell me why? Of course you can. You know that it is outdoor exercise and play that chickens need, and that you need to make you grow big and strong, too. Of course, you will have to keep your backbone straight and your chest out and your head up; but all these things will be easy for you if you are perfectly well and strong.

The school tries to take just as good care of your health and growth as it can. Your lessons are short, and you change from one to another frequently, with perhaps drills or calisthenic exercises between, so that you need not sit still too long at a time; and the seats and desks are of different sizes so that you need not sit at a desk that does not fit you. When your teacher urges you to go out of doors and play at recess time, even if you do not want to, you must think to yourself, "It will rest me and make me grow big and straight and strong."

When you come home from school, go out of doors and stay out just as long as you can. Don't let dolls or toys or picture books tempt you to stay in the house. The pictures out of doors are ever so much prettier, as soon as you learn to see them. But some of you live in crowded cities. I hope you are near a park or a playground, where you can have a good romp with other children, and use the swings and see-saws and bars, and the skating pond in winter, and the swimming pool in summer.

The school garden is flooded in winter--a fine place to skate right after school.]

What fun swimming is! You can learn easily if you have a safe place and an older person to teach you the stroke. You can roll over on your back in the water, and float, and dive; but you must not stay in longer than twenty minutes, and not so long as that sometimes. As soon as you begin to feel chilly, come out. Swimming not only cleans your skin, but is splendid exercise for your lungs and muscles.

All this play out of doors will help your appetite, and that will make you ready to eat the right kind of food, and this food will get into your blood and keep your muscles firm and strong.

II. ACCIDENTS

I am going to tell you what to do in the case of some of the little accidents that may happen to anyone, and especially of the kind that children meet with in playing; but I don't want you to stop playing for fear you'll be hurt. Mother Nature can usually heal all the bumps and cuts and scratches that come from wholesome play.

You can, however, help her very much by keeping the scratch or cut perfectly clean. This is the chief thing to remember. Wash it thoroughly in clean water. Hold it under the pump, or faucet, and let the water pour down on it.

If you can, pour some antiseptic, or germ killer, over the cut, and wrap it up in a clean cloth. There is a medicine called peroxid of hydrogen, which is good for cuts and wounds, but an older person will have to put it on for you.

If the scratch is from a finger nail or the claw of a cat, or if the wound is the bite of some animal, you must be sure to have your mother or a doctor clean the wound with strong medicine. You see, nails and claws and teeth are, as a rule, dirty, and have on them germs that will get into the cut and make it swell and be very sore indeed.

Sometime you may have a cut that is deep. You will see the bright red blood spurt from it. This means that you have cut one of the blood pipes called arteries. If the cut is on the arm or the leg, you should take a cloth or bandage and tie it tightly around the arm or leg above the cut; and if that does not check the blood, put a piece of stick under the cloth and twist the stick, as in the picture. For a cut like this you must get help as soon as possible, and keep quiet, or else you will increase the flow of blood.

If you get anything in your eye, be sure not to rub the eye; don't even wink hard if you can help it. You will only make the pain worse, because you will scratch the eyeball. Let some one take out the bit of dust or the cinder or the fly, or whatever it is, as quickly as possible. Often, if you close the lids gently and hold them so, the tears will wash the speck down for you.

If you should bruise yourself, the best way to treat the bruise is to pour either quite cold or quite warm water over it, and keep this up for several minutes; or to put it into a bowl of hot water. Then tie it up in a bandage of soft cotton cloth or gauze and pour over it a lotion containing a little alcohol--about one sixth or one fourth. This, by evaporating, cools off the bruise and relieves the pain.

If your ear, or nose, or a finger should happen to be frozen or frost bitten, the best thing to do is to rub it hard with snow until it thaws out and becomes pink again. Above all, don't go too near the fire, and don't go into a very warm room too soon.

If you get one of those uncomfortable itchy swellings on your feet called chilblains, which come from cold floors in your houses, or from wet feet, or from wearing too thin shoes and stockings, don't put your feet too near the fire, but rub them well with turpentine just before going to bed at night. This will often take all the pain and itching out of them.

Sometimes people make the mistake of drinking something that is poisonous. Of course, one good way to prevent this is to have every bottle in the house carefully marked and never to take anything from a bottle without reading the mark, or label. Another good way is not to have poisons about any more than we actually need to.

Still, even so, sometimes a mistake is made. If you ever make such a mistake, the best thing to do is to drink as much warm water as you can, and into the second cupful to put a tablespoonful of dry mustard or two heaping tablespoonfuls of salt. This will make you vomit, and up will come the poison. The water makes the poison weaker. If this doesn't make you throw up the poison, have some one tickle the back of your throat with a feather. There are a great many kinds of poison and as many things to take to cure them; but this is the only remedy I shall tell you about, because, by the time you have tried this, some older person will probably have come to help you.

All the medicines that you see advertised as "Headache Cures" are dangerous poisons if taken in too large doses; and most of them in small doses weaken the heart. They are what we call narcotics; they just deaden the nerves to pain without doing anything whatever to relieve or remove the cause.

If you have a headache, the best thing to do is to go and lie down quietly and rest or sleep, until it goes away. A headache always means that something is wrong; it is one of Nature's most valuable danger signals. When your head aches, Nature is telling you that you have been over-straining your eyes, or breathing foul air, or eating some food that does not agree with you, or forgetting to go to the toilet regularly, or not getting sleep enough. The sensible thing to do is not to swallow some medicine to deaden your nerves to the pain, but to find out what you have been doing that is unhealthful for you, and then stop it.

Most of the medicines called "patent medicines," which are advertised to "cure" all sorts of pains and troubles, contain poisons, and are particularly dangerous because they easily lead one to form the habit of taking them. Nine tenths of them are either absolute frauds,--of no strength or use whatever,--or else they contain alcohol, or opium, or some of the dangerous drugs made out of coal tar.

Now about burns. You need not wash them, because the heat has killed the troublesome germs. They need to be covered from the air, if the blister is broken. Cover them thickly with olive oil or vaseline, or common baking soda mixed with a few drops of water. This makes a good paste to put over them, and it will ease the pain. (This is the way to treat a wasp or bee sting, too, after you have pulled out the "stinger.") If the blister of the burn is not broken, just keep putting vaseline or sweet oil on it every half hour or so, and the blister won't break; for the oil will make it limber and prevent it from bursting.

If ever your clothes should catch fire, do not run; the wind you make will only fan the flames, so that they burn faster. Lie down and roll over and over, as fast as you can. If there is a rug or a quilt handy, wrap yourself up tight in it. My youngest brother once saved a little child's life this way. He was not very old, but he remembered to put the child on the floor and roll him up in a rug.

However, the best way to prevent accidents with fire is to let fire and lamps and matches and kerosene and sparklers and firecrackers alone.

I am so glad that people are becoming sensible about keeping our nation's birthday, the Fourth of July, and are doing away with the firecrackers that have killed so many thousands of children. The burns you get from firecrackers are much more dangerous than other burns. A dirt-germ often gets into them that may cause lockjaw. The name tells what it is: it locks the jaws together so that its victim cannot eat; and, of course, if he cannot eat, he cannot live very long. Next Fourth of July try getting flags and bunting and drums and horns, if you like, instead of these dangerous fireworks.