ly
recommended by many woodsmen and other travelers as a good thing to have
in the trail medicine kit. A few drops will kill a fever or a cold.
Dover's Powder (in small doses, by causing perspiration and thus
checking a fever or throwing off a cold), quinine, calomel (for
biliousness and to clean out the intestines when they are clogged with
waste and mucus), Epsom salts or castor oil (to clean out the bowels
also), an emetic, like sirup of ipecac (to empty the stomach quickly in
case of emergency), some mustard for making a plaster for the chest (in
croupiness or cold inside the chest), or for mixing with warm water to
make an emetic, extract of ginger or sirup of ginger (for summer
complaint and griping looseness of the bowels if long continued),
perhaps some soda mint tablets (for sour stomach caused by overeating),
are other simple remedies. Of course the Scout should learn to read the
little clinical thermometer, and one should be carried in the trail kit.

It is much better to know exactly how to use a few simple standard
remedies, than to experiment with a lot of powerful drugs and very
likely make terrible mistakes. To give a medicine without being certain
just why and just what it will do is as bad as pointing a gun at
somebody without knowing whether or not it is loaded. Doctors study hard
for years, before they begin to practice; and Scouts cannot expect to
make doctors of themselves in a few months. Head cool, feet warm, bowels
open, moderate eating--these are United States Army rules, and Scouts'
rules too. "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure"!
Scouts who take care of their bodies properly will rarely need medicine,
and should be proud of the fact.

Note 52, page 153: In 1909, in California alone, out of 388 forest fires
243, or almost two thirds, were caused by human beings' carelessness;
and 119, or almost one third, were caused by camp-fires! The money loss
to the state was $1,000,000; but this was not all the damage. A forest,
or a single tree, is not replaced in a year, or in ten years; and the
stately evergreen trees grow slowest of all.

California claims that if a few plain rules were observed, in that state
alone 500 out of 575 forest fires would not occur. Some of these rules
are:

1. Never throw aside matches, or lighted or smoldering stuff, where
anything can possibly catch from it.

2. Camp-fires should be as small as will serve. (Most campers build
fires too large, and