I remember being sick at home as a kid in the mid-60's and the Family Doctor coming to our house. My parents had that same doctor for proabaly 40 years and his office was always in a couple of rooms off of his residence. I remember him as a gruff old guy but very personable as he knew you for the moment you were born (no keeping secrets from this doctor).

My boss has a similar metal First Aid Kit (white tin box, green lettering) to the one you showed. It was issued to Forestry Workers/Forest Firefighters around the 1960's, I have try and talk him out of it before he retires soon.

Mike

I first heard about chest compressions and rescue breathing in 1965 at a meeting of emergency care personnel. It apparently developed in the ER where they were aware that direct massage of the heart was effective in arrest situations; someone tried external compressions in situations when there wasn't enough time to open the chest. We were told that the Red Cross would be developing a formal course "soon."

In my initial First Aid course a few years earlier, we were instructed in the "back pressure, Arm lift" technique

I think we need to make a new forum for vintage kits and equipment. These articles and posts are good.

Maybe "well seasoned" is a nice way to say it?

I wonder what we're carrying in our "modern" FAK's that someone in future years will be laughing at? I guess in 50+ years people will have AED's built into their watch or something? No, they won't have watches then will they, the time will be thought implanted. They'll have some PDA implant that can keep your calendar, make video calls, play music, connect to the Web, remind you of your wife's birthday (maybe order the flowers and send a card for you), and restart your heart by just thinking about it? It'll probably tell you it's notifying your insurance company after the heart attack to increase your risk profile and your premium at the same time...

That's a great gift. I've never seen bandages (band-aids) that old, so I'm a little surprised that they look basically like what you'd find today. I wonder, do they have that little red string in them to tear open the package that I remember from bandages when I was younger?

as old as a kit like this is we have not really improved much
since then.,better tabs for making the water pure
and a antibiotic cream are about all the improvments made since then..and i'm thinking a common scout or home kit and
not the kits for the EMT with all the good stuff in in..

Good ol' Wikipedia - History of CPR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CPR

" They were very big on tourniquet's back then, they mention them all over the place,"...

IMO the thinking on tourniquets, lead by the military and combat use, is shifting back to more immediate and frequent use of them. I understand that every soldier in the field is advised to carry at least one tourniquet and medics carry half-dozen or more.

In the case of bleeding that is clearly more than insignificant the first move is often to save time by going directly to a tourniquet instead of slowly escalating the response from direct pressure to pressure points to tourniquet.

Starting with the tourniquet on the extremity saves time and allows the person to rapidly move on to the next wound or victim. The idea being that when the situation allows a tourniquet applied to a wound that doesn't require is easy to removed with little harm done as long as it is removed within a relatively short time. Replacing and correcting for blood loss is much more a problem.

Plus, if the bullets are still flying, one might not have time for direct pressure, etc...