Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1919 — RED CROSS TO TEACH ACCIDENT PREVENTION [ARTICLE]

RED CROSS TO TEACH ACCIDENT PREVENTION

First Aid Instruction to Promote Human Efficiency new Red Cross Idea is to diminish and prevent suffer. Ing as well as to relieve It. Accidents, like disease, are largely preventable. The First Aid Bureau of the American Red Cross, Department of Military Relief, is striving to advance proficiency in first-aid and accident prevention among the American people. Recently, several •states, recognizing that the conservation of human life and human energy is all-important, have enacted laws providing for first aid in their industrial plants, in their mines and in their factories. The Red Cross first-aid instruction imparts knowledge to the layman by means of lectures and demonstrations, based on the teachings of modern surgery and of common sense. The suggestions, as outlined in the Red Cross first-aid text-books, are not elaborate. First-aid Instruction, to be most effective, should reach boys and girls at a very receptive age, when growing responsibilities afford them opportunities to apply their knowledge and develop skill in accident prevention and first-aid.

In time of peace accidents have been costing us nearly 100,000 lives annually, and those injured in accidents, some of whom are crippled for life, have exceeded the dead by hundreds of thousands. Five times as many people as are killed are injured to so great an extent that they can no longer earn their living without reeducation. In our homes we are wasting human lives and physical fitness at an appalling rate. One of America’s largest insurance companies reports that for a recent year 28 per cent of the total claims paid for accidental injuries (not Including industrial) were for lnjuries received in and about the homo, the percentage being considerably higher than for any other class of accidents. General knowledge of how to prevent accidents can be made just as effective as general knowledge of how to prevent disease; and good treatment of the Injured is just as important as good treatment of the sick.