Category: First Aid/Medical

Letter Re: Tuberculosis

I read the TB article linked to at SurvivalBlog. The comment section in it explains why we have a problem– all NYT liberals wanting to save the world… Charity, while noble, should be private and personal. (I am not an organized church believer, so even that meets with my disdain, as example the harboring of the illegals being advanced by so called church “Christians” now, all Marxists in sheeps clothing….) The influx of illegals now will cause a health crisis so that should be the number one concern; close the borders. Thank you for all the work you do. I …


Preparing to Prevent and Treat Parasitic Infections, by G.L.

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(Disclaimer: non-medical, non-expert author) I spent nearly eight months in Mexico as a graduate student. One weekend a group of us took a trip to Guanajuato to visit the historic city, enjoy some good food, and see the silver mines and natural mummies. I was not exactly a veteran international traveler, but I was not a rookie either, having traveled several times to my wife’s home country of Venezuela, including trips to areas well outside of the larger cities. I was aware of the hazards of international travel, from petty crime to yellow fever to unsanitary water and food. I …


Letter Re: Salve Making

Dear Mr. Latimer, S.T.’s article on salve making was very interesting. I’ve been making them for several years now. Because I gift and sell them to other people, I buy different size amber and cobalt blue jars to pour the final product in. A great muscle balm salve (which I sent to soldiers’ in Afghanistan who liked it a lot!) is to use oils infused with arnica, meadowsweet, comfrey with a little added coconut oil to the melting beeswax. My favorite lip balm is “baby balm”, made with calendula, chamomile, and roses. It’s also great for diaper rash. A friend …


A Primer On Salve Making, by S.T.

Salve making is an important skill now, and it will become an even more important skill after SHTF. So, master the skill now, collect your recipes, and obtain the various ingredients and equipment needed, because after SHTF there will be no more manufactured goods, and you may not have access to the essential oils and extracts that are needed. My salve making came about when I went looking for a way to replace store purchased hand lotion with a better product that I could make post-SHTF and has evolved from there. From rosemary salve for dry hands to salve for …


Letter Re: Taking WFA Courses

HJL, I’d like to add another positive comment about taking a WFA course. I attended a WFA class taught by SOLO (Stonehearth Open Learning Opportunities) at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in Bryson City, NC. I had previously attended a Red Cross first aid class and came away, as I put it, underwhelmed. So long as you could call someone else, their instruction and procedure was okay, but remove the “civilization” element and you basically have a box of band-aids and kind words. As a previous poster indicated, the WFA covers a lot of “what if”situations and how to deal with …


Letter Re: Officer Survival Initiative First Aid Materials

Scot, I enjoyed your article entitled Product Review: Officer Survival Initiative First Aid Materials. I am a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School and a three-time graduate of the Wilderness Medicine Institute’s Wilderness First Aid Course (a re-certification is required every two years). I have three points: First, Wilderness First Aid has a different orientation than regular Red Cross First Aid courses. The latter are quite practical for most of us who live in cities and towns and focus on assessing and stabilizing a victim, while an ambulance is on its way. In the back country when help is …


Letter Re: Seven Secrets of Medical Prepping

Dear Hugh, I have appreciated Dr. Koelker’s fine contributions to this blog for some time. One thing I would like to add to the doctor’s list of items that were formerly prescription but are now OTC that are “must have’s” to stock up on is Meclizine. If I am not mistake I learned about that drug from one of Dr. Koelker’s Survival Blog offerings. Meclizineis sold as a motion sickness aid for travel. In our area it is available at most pharmacies. A trick I learned is that while they frequently sell store brand “blister pack’s” on their shelves, they …


Scot’s Product Review: Officer Survival Initiative First Aid Materials

Officer Survival Initiative (OSI) says they are “a bunch of current and reformed medics, law enforcement, military, and general trigger puller types who want to help you come home at the end of the day.” That’s a great goal and one they are clearly advancing to. They have put a lot of energy into the law enforcement field, as the name implies, but they also make first aid stuff for outdoors folks and the prepping market. They were kind enough to let me look at some of their kits and modules. The Advantage II Personal Vehicle Aid Kit The first …


Proselytizing With Pandemics, by D.C.

Perhaps in the nature vs. nurture debate, it is going to turn out that people worried about emergency preparedness are just born that way. Certainly, I have tried for years to persuade many of my skeptical friends that having, say, some extra food on hand or some means of personal protection, or even a backup source of energy greater than an extra D battery, is just plain common sense. What I have experienced in response to my well-intentioned suggestions are rolled eyes, turned backs, and closed minds. I’ve pretty much despaired of ever making even the smallest dent in their …


Letter Re: Seven Secrets of Medical Prepping

Hugh, I appreciate the concern pharmacist MDS, Pharm.D. has for keeping all of us safe. His comment regarding the danger of expired tetracycline is worth addressing in more detail. According to the respected newsletter, The Medical Letter, Vol. 44, Issue 1142, October 28, 2002, “The only report of human toxicity that may have been caused by chemical or physical degradation of a pharmaceutical product is renal tubular damage that was associated with use of degraded tetracycline…Current tetracycline preparations have been reformulated with different fillers to minimize degradation and are unlikely to have this effect.” This refers to a 1963 incident, …


Letter Re: Seven Secrets of Medical Prepping

Hugh, As a relatively recent addition to the prepper society, I am a HUGE fan of everything and anything on SurvivalBlog.com and all things James Wesley, Rawles. Kudos on all that you, JWR, and the team do on a daily basis. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. I glean and digest all of the information that I can from the website and JWR’s novels. I am currently reading Expatriates and have already read and passed around to friends and family Patriots, Survivors, Founders, and How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It. I take the information in …


Letter: Mastitis

HJL, Mastitis nearly killed me. In a more primitive country, I could have been another maternal death statistic. Mastitis is just one path of infection and death for new mothers. Mastitis cannot be downplayed. Nor can the value of breast feeding “support” be over estimated. While my response to the excellent and informative article by Dr. Goscienski is intensely personal and private, perhaps in the future it may save a baby or mother’s life. I come from a comfortable family, in the socio-economic sense. It would not be correct to just say we are advocates of breast feeding. Simply, everyone …


Seven Secrets of Medical Prepping, by Cynthia J. Koelker, MD

Someone once commented that my book held no “secrets” to medical prepping, that everything in the book could be found elsewhere. I’d have to agree, but it would take you hundreds of hours to compile the information. My experience has taught me to be cautious of secrets. Don’t they usually just cause trouble? Nothing in medicine should be secret, anyway. In fact, the subtitle to my Survival Medicine courses is “Taking the Mystery Out of Medicine.” Still, “secrets” can be fun, and what follows are seven “secrets” you should know, if you don’t already: Out-dated drugs aren’t actually expired. Drug …


Letter Re: Breastfeeding Babies

Hugh, I wanted to add something to the great blog about the benefits of breastfeeding. It has to do with my experience having breastfed four babies that are now all teenagers. I had many difficulties with breastfeeding. My mom was encouraging, having breastfed all four of hers, too, but I had one problem after another. I could write a book on my stories, but I’ll simplify to make my point. I struggled through with determination, having to bite down on leather at some points because of the pain. I came down with multiple cases of mastitis with each child. There …


Letter Re: Feeding Infants at TEOTWAWKI

Hugh, That was an outstanding article that was supported by facts and dispelled many myths. When I was in PA school, we had an entire lecture dedicated to learning the facts as this article has described. When I nursed my infant (for nine months), I had to fight against two guilt-driven grandmothers who believed I was harming my baby by not giving him formula, despite my medical background. Indeed, this article takes a sledgehammer to the consumer driven culture of formula feeding. I’d like to add that learning about the “techniques” involved in breastfeeding is best done pre-collapse. It’s not …