UNIVERSITY OF BURAO

ASSIGNMENT
History of first aid
Name:Khadiija Ibraahim Faarax
 HISTORY OF FIRST AID
First Aid are so central a part of modern life that it’s hard to imagine a time in
which they didn’t exist.  But before Johnson & Johnson began making the first
commercial first aid kits in 1888, people were on their own when it came to
gathering and maintaining the right supplies to use in treating injuries and in
knowing how to help someone in case of an injury.  A century and a quarter ago,
that changed in a very social media-inspired way:  through a conversation.

As this story from 1882 -- concerning our very own Fred Kilmer -- shows, when
someone was injured before the era of first aid kits and first aid training, standard
operating procedure was to have someone run as quickly as possible to fetch the
nearest doctor – provided there was a doctor within fetching distance.  Critical
minutes and sometimes hours passed without treatment for the injured person,
and many times bystanders did more harm than good while trying to move or
help the man, woman or child who had been injured.

Railroad work in the 1800s was especially dangerous – so dangerous, in fact, that
the railroads had surgeons to treat the often severe injuries to workers building
the railroads and working on the steam locomotives.  This site about the history
of railroad surgeons has a good description of what conditions were like in the
1880s.  Workers laying cross-country track were frequently injured and, working
in the middle of nowhere, they were very far away from medical help.  And here’s
where the first of those conversations came in.

Sometime probably in the spring of 1888 (because the Company acted very
quickly to make new ideas happen, and a letter in our archives to a railway
surgeon is dated June of 1888), Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood
Johnson was on a Colorado and Rio Grande Railroad train, travelling out west and
looking forward to some much-needed vacation time at a Colorado cattle ranch.
Being an outgoing person, Robert Wood Johnson started a conversation with a
fellow passenger on the train: the chief surgeon of the Denver and Rio Grande
Railway.  The surgeon explained that the railroad workers laying track were
frequently injured, but medical help was too far away to do any good.  So Johnson
had the idea to package some of the products Johnson & Johnson made – sterile
gauze, bandages and dressings – in boxes.  Those boxes could be kept with the
workers so that, if they were injured, they could be treated and stabilized until
they could reach more comprehensive medical help.  Our 1888 price list explained
the great need for first aid supplies:  “It is a fact, which is everywhere being
recognized, that many lives are lost and much suffering entailed in such accidents
on account of the lack of the simple but necessary articles required to afford
prompt assistance to the wounded.”  [Johnson & JSo in 1888 Johnson & Johnson
wrote to railway surgeons, telling them that the Company was planning to make
first aid kits, asking them what they needed in the kits.  With their informed
feedback, Johnson & Johnson put out the first commercial first aid kits in 1888: 
one for the railroads, and one general first aid kitohnson Price List, September 1,
1888, p. 20.  From our archives

So in 1888 Johnson & Johnson wrote to railway surgeons, telling them that the
Company was planning to make first aid kits, asking them what they needed in
the kits.  With their informed feedback, Johnson & Johnson put out the first
commercial first aid kits in 1888:  one for the railroads, and one general first aid
kit.es