Saved by Scouts 1912!

[noman]

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1912-01-07/ed-1/seq-1/

[moosetracker]

I love glimpses into history..

 

I understand the removal of the wet clothes & putting dry clothes on him.. But put on the ground face down and rolled around for a few minutes?? What was that about??

 

Also the picture is strange.. What is the young Girl/boy?? that is like the size of a mountain in the background of the boys rescueing the kid from the ice?

 

 

[Twocubdad]

And apparently the pond was a busy place! (Read the next story down.)

 

I believe rolling people was an early, albeit not terribly effective, method of CPR.

[skeptic]

Rolling on a barrel was one of the early drowning recommendations.

[shortridge]

I believe the photograph is of the 7-year-old boy who was rescued. That would have been the general hairstyle for young children of that time period. Young boys of long-ago times used to go around in what looked like dresses until they hit a certain age.

[frank10]

I had assumed the rolling was the one we still teach to allow the snow to absorb the water out of the victim's clothing.

[Reasonable Rascal]

Twocubdad is correct, drowning resuscitation was poorly understood until the 60's. I was taught the Sylvester method when I first joined Boy Scouts (no first aid training in Cubs).

 

From Wikipedia:

 

In the 19th century, Doctor H. R. Silvester described a method (The Silvester Method) of artificial respiration in which the patient is laid on their back, and their arms are raised above their head to aid inhalation and then pressed against their chest to aid exhalation.[69] The procedure is repeated sixteen times per minute. This type of artificial respiration is occasionally seen in films made in the early part of the 20th century.

 

A second technique, called the Holger Neilson technique, described in the first edition of the Boy Scout Handbook in the United States in 1911, described a form of artificial respiration where the person was laid on their front, with their head to the side, resting on the palms of both hands. Upward pressure applied at the patients elbows raised the upper body while pressure on their back forced air into the lungs, essentially the Silvester Method with the patient flipped over. This form is seen well into the 1950s (it is used in an episode of Lassie during the Jeff Miller era), and was often used, sometimes for comedic effect, in theatrical cartoons of the time (see Tom and Jerry's "The Cat and the Mermouse"). This method would continue to be shown, for historical purposes, side-by-side with modern CPR in the Boy Scout Handbook until its ninth edition in 1979. The technique was later banned from first-aid manuals in the U.K.

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It sounds like from the description in the article that the boys were attempting the Holger Nielson Method, which as noted was illustrated in the 1911 Handbook as was current at the time the rescue took place.

 

RR

(This message has been edited by Reasonable Rascal)

[infoscouter]

The illustration is a typical composite that was done in newspapers at the time - a photo combined with a line drawing done by a staff artist at the paper. (I worked in a newspaper library for a while when I was in college, and saw lots of illustrations like this).

 

As to the clothing, routinely up until about the 1920's/30's young boys wore dresses. My dad (born in 1926) wore dresses until age 4 or 5. Also children's shirts, particularly the dress shirts worn for studio photos (which were rare and expensive) had wide and often ruffled collars. At one time, the more embellishement on a garment (ruffles, tucks, etc) signified how well to do one was - it meant you could afford not just the fabric, but the time and skills of a high-end seamstress.

 

The photo was probably obtained from the family and may have been taken when the young boy was a toddler, when he would have worn a dress, or for a special occassion, when he would have been dressed up.