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FOREST AND STREAM. 
209 
Camp Surgery. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
There have been several articles of late in, your valu- 
able paper about Camp Medicine and Camp Surgery, 
and I know of a way to stop bleeding that is_ so easy 
of application that, everybody should know of it; and I 
wish to call the attention not of campers only, but any 
one living out of town and miles from a surgeon, who 
may bleed to death before one can be got to them, 
when if they knew what to do and always kept the 
article or material on hand to do it with, they might 
stop the flow immediately. The blood from any flesh 
wound can be stopped so quickly that it would lead a 
person to believe that it was not much of a wound 
any way. Of course, this does not apply to jugular 
vein, nor a main artery. At least, I have never had a 
chance to try such; but if an artery does _not_ throw a 
stream more than a tenth of an inch in size it will be 
closed up in a few seconds, and the remedy is simple 
and easy, but is unknown, at least I have never known 
any one else to make use of it, and it is something that 
can be applied by any person-without any knowledge 
of surgery. 
If the wound has any foreign substance in it, wash it 
out with hot water, and if there is a syringe at hand it 
is a fine thing to do it with, but not essential; and if 
hot water is not obtainable, use other water. But if the 
wound is clean, use no washing, but have some one 
hold the wound (if it is a cut) as wide open as they 
can, and the dressing is nothing but just pulverized 
alumn. It is to be put into the wound and tamped in, 
as you see men tamp gravel under a railroad tie,- or 
until the wound is full. The tamping process is to make 
sure that the alum has reached the bottom of the 
wound. 
Then press the wound together and hold it so for 
two or three minutes. Then sew it up. I have treated 
several bad wounds this way, and I never but once 
even had silk to use. My method of sewing is original, 
so far as I know. I simply knot the end of the thread 
and commence at one end of the wound and just sew 
over and over with the stitches about one-half inch 
apart, if it is a large wound and in a fleshy place; but 
if otherwise not more than one-quarter to one-eighth 
inch. At the last end of the cut put a knot in the 
thread close down. If the alum has got to all parts of 
the wound, it will have stopped bleeding before you 
have finished applying it; so you will have no bother 
from blood while sewing it together. Then bandage 
it with anything at hand. I generally have had to tear 
a cotton shirt into strips about three inches wide and 
shingle it on about three-ply and then sew it fast. 
In two instances where a shirt was not to be had I 
folded a pocket handkerchief two-ply and then tore 
up a flannel shirt into strips and wound it on and 
sewed it fast. The bandage is only to keep the cloth- 
ing from rubbing the parts. 
I have never had to use any other dressing nor more 
than the one application, and there has been no slough- 
ing, and almost no swelling. One vacation I had to 
practice on myself from my under lip having been torn 
from the jaw, I having been projected into a sandbank 
.at such high speed that the sand was forced into my 
mouth, and even into my lungs; it took me a week to 
cough the last of it up. Incidentally my under lip 
was turned down on my throat and my jaw unjointed. 
But as soon as I got the sand out of my mouth so I 
could breathe, and had fprced iny jaw back into place, I 
turned my under lip.up to where it should be and went 
to the camp (I was at worklfor a logger) and cleaned- 
the sand out of the; pocket and then filled it up with 
alum; then after holding my hand against my chin for 
a minute or two, I tied a handkerchief across my chin 
and around my neck; and that was the only dressing 
that it ever required. It healed without any sloughing. 
One time only have I had occasion to treat a gun 
shot wound, and that was when a man that was fool- 
identally (no such shooting can or should be called 
accidental) shot by a comrade while hunting deer. He 
was a man of ample proportions, and the bullet went 
through the thigh just back of the bone. I heard the 
shot about 300 yards from me, and also heard the man 
who was shot yell, and I knew by the tone of his voice 
that he was hurt. I went to him as soon as possible, 
and found them (there were four in their party) at a 
standstill, expecting that the man would bleed to death 
in a few minutes. Of course there was considerable 
show of blood; but I found upon investigation that it 
was nothing but capillary bleeding, and I told him that 
he was in no danger, and that if he could walk (and 
that if he couldn’t, we would rig up a stretcher and 
carry him, for it was not more than three-quarters of a 
mile to where we were camped), I could stop the bleed- 
ing so quickly after we got there that he would think 
that he was not hurt much. Well, when he came to try 
walking, he found he could go all right, and as soon as 
we got there I whittled out a small round stick and 
inserted a small tin funnel in the wound. I had an ounce 
bottle of the crushed alum, and had one of them pour 
the alum in the funnel and I kept poking it into the 
wound with the stick. I had previously rolled up a 
silk handkerchief and poked the end through with the 
stick until I could get hold of it, and then pulled it 
through, so that if there were any bits of clothing in 
the wound it would be likely to stick to the hand- 
kerchief. I kept ramming the alum in until it was 
full, and then I tore up a. cotton shirt and made a 
bandage and bound it up. The wound healed without 
sloughing any, and was well in six days. 
Several of the cuts that I have treated were un- 
bandaged three , and a half days after injury and were 
found to be healed all right. One of them was of a 
horse that got cut in the ankle; an artery was severed, 
and the blood spurted eight or ten feet. The man who 
owned the horse was going to pull the harness of¥ 
and give him up for dead. This was in the logging 
woods in Wisconsin; but we were close to the camp — 
not more than a hundred yards — and I told him to take 
the horse to the stable, for I could stop the bleeding 
in fifteen seconds. I ran into the camp and got my 
bottle of alum, and was at the stable as soon as he was. 
I told him to grab hold of the hair at the edges of the 
cut (it was three inches long) and hold it open as 
wide as he could and with a lifting tension. I crammed 
it full and tamped in the alum until all of the onlookers 
laughed like idiots.. They all thought that the horse 
would die anyhow, for in the excitement they had not 
noticed that it had stopped bleeding. Then I told the 
man to let loose. I pressed the edges of the cut to- 
gether and held it for a minute; and then told hirn to 
keep his hands on it and not allow it to gap open. Then 
I went back to the shanty and got a glover’s needle 
and shoe threat, two-ply, and sewed it up with my 
Qver-and-over method stitches, five-eighths of an inch 
apart. This was just before dinner. The man was 
hauling, logs on sleighs, and he had four horses, and 
after dinner he said, “Well, I can drive a spike team 
now for a , while.” I said that the horse was all right. 
“Yes,” said he, “but it won’t do to try to work that 
horse for several days, as it will start it to bleeding 
again, and perhaps two miles from camp, and then he 
would be a gon;er.” I remarked that it would have to 
be another cut if it did. “Well,” he said, “I gave him 
up ouce, and you said he was all right; 'so now if you 
say he can work all right, to work he goes.” He took 
the horse out and he never limped a bit. For that 
matter he had not from the first acted as if he was 
hurt very much. Three days and a half after when I 
removed the bandage the cut was healed, and I cut 
and pulled the sewing. A white streak not more than a 
tenth of an inch wide was all the scar there was. 
W. A. Linkletter. 
Hoquiam, Wash. 
Houseboats and Houseboating. 
Outdoor people and above all city people will be greatly 
interested in the volume on Houseboats, which the Forest 
and Stream Publishing Company now have in press. The 
people of the United States are turning more and more 
toward an open air life in summer, yet the lands acces- 
sible to centers of civilization are being taken up and 
utilized so rapidly that they are each year growing more 
and more expensive. Besides that, the cost of running 
two establishments — of having a country place as well 
as a habitation in the city — is very considerable, and if 
possible is to- be avoided. 
Many of the problems of country existence are to be 
escaped by the use of the houseboat. For this no expen- 
sive ground is required, land need not be purchased nor 
rent paid; coachmen and gardeners can be dispensed 
with ; one anchors his houseboat on the water which is 
free to all, and remains there as long as he pleases ; or 
he makes an arrangement with some land holder, and for 
a very trifle ^iiay moor his houseboat to the bank, then 
when he likes he can up anchor and go away to- some 
other place. The question as to whether the owner shall 
have his own motive power on a houseboat, or shall have 
an auxiliary vessel to tow it, will be decided by each 
individual. 
Among the obvious advantages of houseboat life are 
economy, freedom to go where one pleases on the water, 
the, delights of boating, bathing and fishing at all times, 
together with a privacy as great as one may desire. Such 
a life may be a judicious mixture of wild wood camp or 
city life. One may be alone or may have as many guests 
as he has. room for. Then, too, in these days of auto- 
mobiles, the car may be stored on the houseboat and land 
journeys of indefinite length may be taken. There are 
possibilities in houseboat life only to be realized by those 
who have tried it as thoroughly as have the English. They 
are enthusiastic in their approval of it, and it is sure to 
become popular in the United States. 
Sea Elephants on Kerguelen Island. 
The sea elephant, as stated in an article in the 
Forest and Stream printed some weeks ago, was 
formerly very abundant in the Antarctic, and existed in 
some numbers on the coast of California. In both 
places it has been practically exterminated. When the 
animals became very scarce, it became unprofitable to 
send vessels to get the skins and'oil, and freedom from 
pursuit enabled the species in the Antarctic to in- 
crease. About ten years ago, however, the killing was 
revived at Kerguelen Island by a vessel from New 
London, Conn., and again in 1897 a vessel from Boston 
visited the island and secured about 4,000 of the ani- 
mals, which yielded 1,700 barrels of oil. 
In the London “Zoologist” appeared an article by Mr. 
Robert Hall, who in the summer of 1897 and 1898 paid 
a visit to Kerguelen Island in the brig Edward, which 
may very likely have been one of the vessels above re- 
ferred to. Mr. Hall’s account deals solely with the 
sea elephant as he saw it, and not only gives an ex- 
cellent notion of the size and habits of the animal, but 
also of their extraordinary inertia and of the difficul- 
ties and even dangers of this butchery. The sea 
elephant is probably nearer absolute extinction than- 
any mammal in the world. _ _ * 
Kerguelen’s Land is a large island of about ninety 
miles by forty miles, and full of fiords, on the coasts of 
which the sea elephants congregate in numbers, more 
especially on the west coast, where they are secure, 
owing to- its ruggedness, dangerous, winds and cur- 
rents. It is thought they arrive to rear a family in 
August, and our observations lead us to believe the 
departure is timed for February and March. During 
these months they are very restless, and remain no 
longer the listless creatures of December'. A sea 
elephant is contrary in nature to a sea lion, for, while 
the former on this island is docile and languid, the 
latter on the Aucklands is active and savage. The 
elephant, on observing a stranger, shows a restless 
eye, but quickly goes to sleep again._ ■ You may then 
walk through a herd of fifty sleeping animals, and 
merely disturb one or two for . a moment. These hot- 
blooded creatures vary in size from 6 feet to 20 feet 
6 inches, and we found a skeleton of a yong one about 
4 feet in length. The largest were exceedingly difficult 
to handle; but as the enterprise of our ship was prin- 
cipally a commercial one, the business faculty was 
quickly brought to bear upon any awkward and 
unwilling customer. 
Many of the animals would weigh approximately two 
to, six tons. No five men could turn a large bull over 
without, special leyers,, and it, needed seven sealers to 
haul half a skin along the sand to the boat in waiting. 
As for dragging a whole skin, that was quite out of the 
question under the circumstances. For museum pur- 
poses we made a preparation of one, and this we feared 
would break the tackle while being drawn on board from 
the end of a towline. Its length was only 14 feet 9 
inches, with a girth of 10 feet lo- inches about the pec- 
toral girdle. From shoulder to shoulder it measured 
5 feet 6 inches. The circumfere.nce at the base of the 
flippers was 3 feet 6 inches. 
To the great bulk there was a mouth with a breadth 
at the angle of 9 inches only', and a tongue (which we 
found later to be excellent eating) quite filled it. Dr. 
Stirling has this specimen, mounted in the South Aus- 
tralian Museum. While the blubber ranges from 2 to 
6 inches in depth, it varies in weight. Six men were 
employed in changing the position of one fatty skin 
while on the skinning board. This is a fair example of 
a male, which is always larger than the female. The 
congregation in harbors was generally systematic. The 
bulls occupied one part of the beach and the cows 
formed a colony in another. There were always sev- 
eral colonies in a harbor, and they seldom appeared 
to intermingle. The young were not numerous. They 
had probably set out on their southerly migration be- 
fore our arrival on Dec. 27, or were scattered pro- 
miscuously along the beaches. 
, It is the general impression, that these mammals lie 
in their rookeries for days or weeks together, and do 
not feed otherwise than on their fatty tissue. With this 
view I do not altogether agree, for most of the seals 
are daily to be seen in the water, either coming in with 
the full flood or going out with the early part of an 
ebb tide. That a young sea elephant, 6 feet in length 
can live a month on its own fat was proved by one we 
brought to Melbourne, and which was lodged in the 
aquarium, but died a few months later. 
One day, as many as eighty may be countel; the 
next day the same beach may only contain ten, with 
other heads poking above the floating weed, and show- 
mg glassy round black eyes quite wide awake. Our 
-inen have o;ften shot as many as sixty at one time, and 
found next day another twenty had come up among 
the dead, simply because it was their chosen lair. 
T nis species dislikes expending energy on land, and they 
will lie in a group of twenty to sixty in some grassy 
spot with a sandy landing. Some few will ascend to- 
an, inclined distance of 150 yards, and there they are not 
sc active as those below, and probably do not go out 
dail.\. Th.e- energy would be too much, for them, as, 
they .are slov' crawlers, using only two flippers and the 
snake-like action of vertebra and muscles. 
The first' anchorage of the brig was at Royal Sound, 
and before we removed from a beach of four miles in 
extent we had collected 426 skins. Our two anchors 
were lifted for a second harbor on Jan. 17 (Greenland 
Harbor). 
_ During the first day sixty to seventy were killed, and 
similar results often followed. To shoot more at one 
time was inadvisable. An average of forty per day was 
considered good, and this allowed time to ship and 
“speck,” i. e., take the blubber from the skin. 
The finest herd we visited just befo.re leaving the 
island. In all, there were twenty-four magnificent ani- 
mals, roughly averaging 19 feet in length. Before in- 
troducing ourselves, I noticed one great “elephant” 
take a short cut over another, and a quarrel arose. Both 
growled and stood partly supported by their shoulder 
flippers. Another disagreement arose elsewhere, but it 
seems to me there is more bark than bite, as animos- 
ity is quickly lost in sleep. One unfortunate animal had 
a badly torn nose, in all probability a dental evidence 
of past troubles. One of the crew gave me a tooth 
some 7 inches in length, the greater portion of which 
lies within the gum (e. g., 4.9 inches). When dis- 
turbed the belching of each of these old bulls was ob- 
jectionably strong, for it can scarcely be called a roar. 
So grear is the exertion, that blood appears in the, 
pharynx, and this occurred when I was engaged near its 
head, measuring the trough m which it lay. This lair 
along the convex part was 32 feet in length, the breadth 
7 feet, tapering toward each end. The depth of these, 
mostly dry mud holes placed among the grasses, ranges 
to about 2 feet, seldom deeper; but they were placed in 
natural depressions— i. e., extra to the artificial ones. 
