Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, was a British Army officer, writer and first Chief Scout of the world-wide Boy Scout Movement, founder, with his sister Agnes, of the world-wide Girl Guide / Girl Scout Movement. Baden-Powell authored the first editions of the seminal work Scouting for Boys, an inspiration for the Scout Movement. Educated at Charterhouse in Surrey, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his military books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were read by boys. In 1907, he held a demonstration camp, the Brownsea Island Scout camp, now seen as the beginning of Scouting. Based on his earlier books Aids to Scouting, he wrote Scouting for Boys, published in 1908 by Sir Arthur Pearson, for boy readership. In 1910 Baden-Powell formed The Boy Scouts Association.
The first Scout Rally was held at The Crystal Palace in 1909, at which appeared a number of girls in Scout uniform, who told Baden-Powell that they were the "Girl Scouts", following which, in 1910, Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell started the Girl Guides Movement. In 1912 he married Olave St Clair Soames, he gave guidance to the Scouting and Girl Guiding Movements until retiring in 1937. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, where he died and was buried in 1941, his grave is now a National Monument. Baden-Powell's father was the Reverend Professor Baden Powell, a prominent mathematician and theologian, whose family originated in Suffolk, his mother was Henrietta Grace, daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth whose earliest known Smyth ancestor was a Royalist American colonist. Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell at 6 Stanhope Street, Paddington in London, on 22 February 1857, he was called Stephe by his family. He was named after his godfather, Robert Stephenson, the railway and civil engineer, his third name was his mother's maiden name.
Baden-Powell was the son of The Reverend Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University and Church of England priest and his third wife, Henrietta Grace Smyth, eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth. After Powell died in 1860, to identify her children with her late husband's fame, to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, his mother styled the family name Baden-Powell; the name was legally changed by Royal Licence on 30 April 1902. Baden-Powell had four older half-siblings from the second of his father's two previous marriages, six full siblings Warington, the often-ill Augustus, Francis and Baden, as well as three others, who had all died young before he was born. Baden-Powell's father died. Subsequently, Baden-Powell was raised by his mother, a strong woman, determined that her children would succeed. In 1933 he said of her "The whole secret of my getting on, lay with my mother."Baden-Powell attended Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells. He was given a scholarship to a prestigious public school.
He played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist, enjoyed acting. Holidays were spent on canoeing expeditions with his brothers, his first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were out-of-bounds. In 1876 Baden-Powell joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant, he enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, where he was Mentioned in Despatches. During one of his travels, he came across a large string of wooden beads. Although Baden-Powell claimed the beads had been those of the Zulu king Dinizulu, one researcher learned from Baden-Powell's diary that he had taken beads from a dead woman's body around that time and indeed the bead form is more similar to dowry beads than to warrior beads; the beads were incorporated into the Wood Badge training programme he started after he founded the Scouting Movement.
Baden-Powell's skills impressed his superiors and in 1890 he was brevetted Major as Military Secretary and senior Aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth. He was posted to Malta for three years working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence, he travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings. In 1884 he published Scouting. Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896, served in the Second Matabele War, in the expedition to relieve British South Africa Company personnel under siege in Bulawayo; this was a formative experience for him not only because he commanded reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in the Matopos Hills, but because many of his Boy Scout ideas took hold here. It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to stories of the American O
Shirt
A shirt is a cloth garment for the upper body. An undergarment worn by men, it has become, in American English, a catch-all term for a broad variety of upper-body garments and undergarments. In British English, a shirt is more a garment with a collar, sleeves with cuffs, a full vertical opening with buttons or snaps. A shirt can be worn with a necktie under the shirt collar; the world's oldest preserved garment, discovered by Flinders Petrie, is a "highly sophisticated" linen shirt from a First Dynasty Egyptian tomb at Tarkan, dated to c. 3000 BC: "the shoulders and sleeves have been finely pleated to give form-fitting trimness while allowing the wearer room to move. The small fringe formed during weaving along one edge of the cloth has been placed by the designer to decorate the neck opening and side seam."The shirt was an item of clothing that only men could wear as underwear, until the twentieth century. Although the women's chemise was a related garment to the men's, it is the men's garment that became the modern shirt.
In the Middle Ages, it was a plain, undyed garment worn next under regular garments. In medieval artworks, the shirt is only visible on humble characters, such as shepherds and penitents. In the seventeenth century, men's shirts were allowed to show, with much the same erotic import as visible underwear today. In the eighteenth century, instead of underpants, men "relied on the long tails of shirts... to serve the function of drawers. Eighteenth-century costume historian Joseph Strutt believed that men who did not wear shirts to bed were indecent; as late as 1879, a visible shirt with nothing over it was considered improper. The shirt sometimes cuffs. In the sixteenth century, men's shirts had embroidery, sometimes frills or lace at the neck and cuffs and through the eighteenth century long neck frills, or jabots, were fashionable. Coloured shirts began to appear in the early nineteenth century, as can be seen in the paintings of George Caleb Bingham, they were considered casual wear, for lower-class workers only, until the twentieth century.
For a gentleman, "to wear a sky-blue shirt was unthinkable in 1860 but had become standard by 1920 and, in 1980, constituted the most commonplace event."European and American women began wearing shirts in 1860, when the Garibaldi shirt, a red shirt as worn by the freedom fighters under Giuseppe Garibaldi, was popularized by Empress Eugénie of France. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Century Dictionary described an ordinary shirt as "of cotton, with linen bosom and cuffs prepared for stiffening with starch, the collar and wristbands being separate and adjustable"; the first documented appearance of the expression "To give the shirt off one's back", happened in 1771 as an idiom that indicates extreme desperation or generosity and is still in common usage. In 1827 Hannah Montague, a housewife in upstate New York, invents the detachable collar. Tired of washing her husband’s entire shirt when only the collar needed it, she cut off his collars and devised a way of attaching them to the neckband after washing.
It wasn't until the 1930s that collar stays became popular, although these early accessories resembled tie clips more than the small collar stiffeners available today. They connected the collar points to the necktie, keeping them in place Camp shirt – a loose, straight-cut, short sleeved shirt or blouse with a simple placket front-opening and a "camp collar". Dress shirt – shirt with a formal collar, a full-length opening at the front from the collar to the hem, sleeves with cuffs White shirt - dress shirt which its colour is white Dinner shirt – a shirt made to be worn with male evening wear, e.g. a black tie or white tie. Guayabera – an embroidered dress shirt with four pockets. Poet shirt – a loose-fitting shirt or blouse with full bishop sleeves with large frills on the front and on the cuffs. T-shirt – "tee shirt", a casual shirt without a collar or buttons, made of a stretchy, finely knit fabric cotton, short-sleeved. Worn under other shirts, it is now a common shirt for everyday wear in some countries.
Long-sleeved T-shirt – a T-shirt with long sleeves that extend to cover the arms. Ringer T-shirt – tee with a separate piece of fabric sewn on as the collar and sleeve hems Halfshirt – a high-hemmed T-shirt Sleeveless shirt – a shirt manufactured without sleeves, or one whose sleeves have been cut off called a tank top A-shirt or vest or singlet – a sleeveless shirt with large armholes and a large neck hole worn by labourers or athletes for increased movability. Camisole – woman's undershirt with narrow straps, or a similar garment worn alone. Referred to as a cami, shelf top, spaghetti straps or strappy top Polo shirt – a pullover soft collar short-sleeved shirt with an abbreviated button placket at the neck and a longer back than front. Rugby shirt – a long-sleeved polo shirt, traditionally of rugged construction in thick cotton or wool, but softer today Henley shirt – a collarless polo shirt Baseball shirt – distinguished by a three quarters sleeve, team insignia, flat waist seam Sweatshirt – long-sleeved athletic shirt of heavier material, with or without hood Tunic – primitive shirt, distinguished by two-piece construction.
A men's garment, is seen in modern times being worn by women Shirtwaist – a woman's tailored shirt (al
Scouting
Scouting or the Scout Movement is a movement that aims to support young people in their physical and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society, with a strong focus on the outdoors and survival skills. During the first half of the twentieth century, the movement grew to encompass three major age groups for boys and, in 1910, a new organization, Girl Guides, was created for girls, it is one of several worldwide youth organizations. In 1906 and 1907 Robert Baden-Powell, a lieutenant general in the British Army, wrote a book for boys about reconnaissance and scouting. Baden-Powell wrote Scouting for Boys, based on his earlier books about military scouting, with influence and support of Frederick Russell Burnham, Ernest Thompson Seton of the Woodcraft Indians, William Alexander Smith of the Boys' Brigade, his publisher Pearson. In the summer of 1907 Baden-Powell held a camp on Brownsea Island in England to test ideas for his book; this camp and the publication of Scouting for Boys are regarded as the start of the Scout movement.
The movement employs the Scout method, a programme of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, including camping, aquatics, hiking and sports. Another recognized movement characteristic is the Scout uniform, by intent hiding all differences of social standing in a country and making for equality, with neckerchief and campaign hat or comparable headwear. Distinctive uniform insignia include the fleur-de-lis and the trefoil, as well as badges and other patches; the two largest umbrella organizations are the World Organization of the Scout Movement, for boys-only and co-educational organizations, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts for girls-only organizations but accepting co-educational organizations. The year 2007 marked the centenary of Scouting worldwide, member organizations planned events to celebrate the occasion. Scouting started itself, but the trigger that set it going was the 1908 publication of Scouting for Boys written by Robert Baden-Powell.
At Charterhouse, one of England's most famous public schools, Baden-Powell had an interest in the outdoors. As a military officer, Baden-Powell was stationed in British India in the 1880s where he took an interest in military scouting and in 1884 he published Reconnaissance and Scouting. In 1896, Baden-Powell was assigned to the Matabeleland region in Southern Rhodesia as Chief of Staff to Gen. Frederick Carrington during the Second Matabele War. In June 1896 he met here and began a lifelong friendship with Frederick Russell Burnham, the American-born Chief of Scouts for the British Army in Africa; this was a formative experience for Baden-Powell not only because he had the time of his life commanding reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, but because many of his Boy Scout ideas originated here. During their joint scouting patrols into the Matobo Hills, Burnham augmented Baden-Powell's woodcraft skills, inspiring him and sowing seeds for both the programme and for the code of honour published in Scouting for Boys.
Practised by frontiersmen of the American Old West and indigenous peoples of the Americas, woodcraft was little known to the British Army but well-known to the American scout Burnham. These skills formed the basis of what is now called scoutcraft, the fundamentals of Scouting. Both men recognised that wars in Africa were the British Army needed to adapt. During this time in the Matobo Hills Baden-Powell first started to wear his signature campaign hat like the one worn by Burnham, acquired his kudu horn, the Ndebele war instrument he used every morning at Brownsea Island to wake the first Boy Scouts and to call them together in training courses. Three years in South Africa during the Second Boer War, Baden-Powell was besieged in the small town of Mafikeng by a much larger Boer army; the Mafeking Cadet Corps was a group of youths that supported the troops by carrying messages, which freed the men for military duties and kept the boys occupied during the long siege. The Cadet Corps performed well, helping in the defence of the town, were one of the many factors that inspired Baden-Powell to form the Scouting movement.
Each member received a badge that illustrated spearhead. The badge's logo was similar to the fleur-de-lis shaped arrowhead that Scouting adopted as its international symbol; the Siege of Mafeking was the first time since his own childhood that Baden-Powell, a regular serving soldier, had come into the same orbit as "civilians"—women and children—and discovered for himself the usefulness of well-trained boys. In the United Kingdom, the public, through newspapers, followed Baden-Powell's struggle to hold Mafeking, when the siege was broken he had become a national hero; this rise to fame fuelled the sales of the small instruction book he had written in 1899 about military scouting and wilderness survival, Aids to Scouting, that owed much to what he had learned from discussions with Burnham. On his return to England, Baden-Powell noticed that boys showed considerable interest in Aids to Scouting, unexpectedly used by teachers and youth organizations as their first Scouting handbook, he was urged to rewrite this book for boys during an inspection of the Boys' Brigade, a large youth movement drille
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process; the official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire; the Nazi regime ended. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, on 30 January 1933; the NSDAP began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the Chancellery and Presidency. A national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany.
All power was centralised in Hitler's person and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitler's favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen; the return to economic stability boosted the regime's popularity. Racism antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime; the Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race. Discrimination and persecution against Jews and Romani people began in earnest after the seizure of power; the first concentration camps were established in March 1933. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, liberals and communists were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler's rule were oppressed, many leaders imprisoned.
Education focused on racial biology, population policy, fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased Germany on the international stage. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, Hitler's hypnotic oratory to influence public opinion; the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. The Nazi regime dominated neighbours through military threats in the years leading up to war. Nazi Germany made aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if these were not met, it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR, invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. By early 1941, Germany controlled much of Europe. Reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas and a German administration was established in the remainder of Poland.
Germany exploited labour of both its occupied territories and its allies. In the Holocaust, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, or shot. While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was successful, the Soviet resurgence and entry of the US into the war meant the Wehrmacht lost the initiative on the Eastern Front in 1943 and by late 1944 had been pushed back to the pre-1939 border. Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated in 1944 and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, capitulated in May 1945. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war; the victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.
The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945, while common English terms are "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich". The latter, adopted by Nazi propaganda as Drittes Reich, was first used in Das Dritte Reich, a 1923 book by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck; the book counted the Holy Roman Empire as the German Empire as the second. Germany was known as the Weimar Republic during the years 1919 to 1933, it was a republic with a semi-presidential system. The Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism, contentious relationships with the Allied victors of World War I, a series of failed attempts at coalition government by divided political parties. Severe setbacks to the German economy began after World War I ended because of reparations payments required under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles; the government printed money to make the payments and to repay the country's war debt, but the resulting hyperinflation led to inflated prices for consumer goods, economic chaos, food riots.
When the government defaulted on their reparations payments in January 1923, French troops occupied German industrial areas along the Ruhr and widespread civil unrest followed. The National Socialist German Workers' Party (National
Hungary
Hungary is a country in Central Europe. Spanning 93,030 square kilometres in the Carpathian Basin, it borders Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Austria to the northwest, Romania to the east, Serbia to the south, Croatia to the southwest, Slovenia to the west. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a medium-sized member state of the European Union; the official language is Hungarian, the most spoken Uralic language in the world, among the few non-Indo-European languages to be spoken in Europe. Hungary's capital and largest city is Budapest; the territory of modern Hungary was for centuries inhabited by a succession of peoples, including Celts, Germanic tribes, West Slavs and the Avars. The foundations of the Hungarian state were established in the late ninth century CE by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád following the conquest of the Carpathian Basin, his great-grandson Stephen I ascended the throne in 1000, converting his realm to a Christian kingdom. By the 12th century, Hungary became a regional power, reaching its cultural and political height in the 15th century.
Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Hungary was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. It came under Habsburg rule at the turn of the 18th century, joined Austria to form the Austro–Hungarian Empire, a major European power; the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after World War I, the subsequent Treaty of Trianon established Hungary's current borders, resulting in the loss of 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, 32% of ethnic Hungarians. Following the tumultuous interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a socialist republic spanning four decades; the country gained widespread international attention as a result of its 1956 revolution and the seminal opening of its previously-restricted border with Austria in 1989, which accelerated the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became a democratic parliamentary republic.
Hungary is an OECD high-income economy and has the world's 58th largest economy by PPP. It ranks 45th on the Human Development Index, owing in large part to its social security system, universal health care, tuition-free secondary education. Hungary's rich cultural history includes significant contributions to the arts, literature, sports and technology, it is the 13th most popular tourist destination in Europe, attracting 15.8 million international tourists in 2017, owing to attractions such as the largest thermal water cave system in the world, second largest thermal lake, the largest lake in Central Europe and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. Hungary's cultural and academic prominence classify it as a middle power in global affairs. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and has been part of the Schengen Area since 2007, it is a member of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe, the Visegrád Group.
The "H" in the name of Hungary is most due to early founded historical associations with the Huns, who had settled Hungary prior to the Avars. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Byzantine Greek Oungroi. According to an explanation,the Greek name was borrowed from Old Bulgarian ągrinŭ, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the collective name for the tribes who joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars; the Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of ország. The word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri; the first element magy is from Proto-Ugric *mäńć-'man, person' found in the name of the Mansi people. The second element eri,'man, lineage', survives in Hungarian férj'husband', is cognate with Mari erge'son', Finnish archaic yrkä'young man'; the Roman Empire conquered the territory west of the Danube between 35 and 9 BC. From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century, Pannonia was part of the Roman Empire, located within part of Hungary's territory.
Around AD 41–54, a 500-strong cavalry unit created the settlement of Aquincum and a Roman legion of 6,000 men was stationed here by AD 89. A civil city grew in the neighbourhood of the military settlement and in AD 106 Aquincum became the focal point of the commercial life of this area and the capital city of the province of Pannonia Inferior; this area now corresponds to the Óbuda district of Budapest, with the Roman ruins now forming part of the modern Aquincum museum. Came the Huns, a Central Asian tribe who built a powerful empire. After Hunnish rule, the Germanic Ostrogoths and Gepids, the Avar Khaganate, had a presence in the Carpathian Basin. In the 9th century, East Francia, the First Bulgarian Empire and Great Moravia ruled the territory of the Carpathian Basin; the freshly unified Hungarians led by Árpád, settled in the Carpathian Basin starting in 895. According to linguistic evidence, they originated from an ancient Uralic-speaking population that inhabited the forested area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.
As a federation of united tribes, Hungary was established in 895, some 50 years after the division of the Carolingian Empire at the Treaty of Verdun in 843, before the unification of the Anglo-Saxon king
Ascot tie
An ascot tie, or ascot or hanker-tie, is a neckband with wide pointed wings, traditionally made of pale grey patterned silk. This wide tie is patterned, folded over, fastened with a tie pin or tie clip, it is reserved for formal wear with morning dress for daytime weddings and worn with a cutaway morning coat and striped grey formal trousers. This type of dress cravat is made of a thicker, woven type of silk similar to a modern tie and is traditionally either grey or black; the ascot is descended from the earlier type of cravat widespread in the early 19th century, most notably during the age of Beau Brummell, made of starched linen and elaborately tied around the neck. In the 1880s, amongst the upper-middle-class in Europe men began to wear a more loosely tied version for formal daytime events with daytime full dress in frock coats or with morning coats, it remains a feature of morning dress for weddings today. The Royal Ascot race meeting at the Ascot Racecourse gave the ascot its name, although such dress cravats were no longer worn with morning dress at the Royal Ascot races by the Edwardian era.
The ascot was still worn for business with morning dress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In British English, the casual form is called a cravat, or sometimes as a day cravat to distinguish it from the formal dress cravat, it is made from a thinner woven silk, more comfortable when worn against the skin with ornate and colourful printed patterns. Students at the United States Army Officer Candidate School wear ascots as part of their uniform, black for basic officer candidates and white for senior officer candidates. Pararescue trainees upon completion of extended training day are given a blue ascot. In the United States Navy the ascot is now worn for ceremonial purposes with Enlisted Full Dress Whites and Enlisted Full Dress Blue in the Ceremonial Guard. In the Dutch Army, it is a part of the uniform, for barrack use, the ascot is in the weapon colors, with a logo, when in combat uniform, a DPM or desert version is used; the Royal Danish Army employs an ascot for the ceremonial version of the barrack dress, its colors vary between each company.
"Uniform Regulations for the Army". Army Operational Command. DK: parawings.com. September 2012. Archived from the original on 19 October 2016. Retrieved 19 October 2016. Villarosa, Riccardo: The Elegant Man - How to Construct the Ideal Wardrobe. Random House, 1992. ISBN 0-679-42101-7 How to tie the Ruche knot How to tie an Ascot Tie
First aid
First aid is the first and immediate assistance given to any person suffering a serious illness or injury, with care provided to preserve life, prevent the condition from worsening, or to promote recovery. It includes initial intervention in a serious condition prior to professional medical help being available, such as performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation while awaiting for an ambulance, as well as the complete treatment of minor conditions, such as applying a plaster to a cut. First aid is performed by someone with basic medical training. Mental health first aid is an extension of the concept of first aid to cover mental health. There are many situations which may require first aid, many countries have legislation, regulation, or guidance which specifies a minimum level of first aid provision in certain circumstances; this can include specific training or equipment to be available in the workplace, the provision of specialist first aid cover at public gatherings, or mandatory first aid training within schools.
First aid, does not require any particular equipment or prior knowledge, can involve improvisation with materials available at the time by untrained people. First aid can be performed on all mammals, although this article relates to the care of human patients. Skills of what is now known as first aid have been recorded throughout history in relation to warfare, where the care of both traumatic and medical cases is required in large numbers; the bandaging of battle wounds is shown on Classical Greek pottery from c. 500 BCE, whilst the parable of the Good Samaritan includes references to binding or dressing wounds. There are numerous references to first aid performed within the Roman army, with a system of first aid supported by surgeons, field ambulances, hospitals. Roman legions had the specific role of capsarii, who were responsible for first aid such as bandaging, are the forerunners of the modern combat medic. Further examples occur through history, still related to battle, with examples such as the Knights Hospitaller in the 11th century CE, providing care to pilgrims and knights in the Holy Land.
During the late 18th century, drowning as a cause of death was a major concern amongst the population. In 1767, a society for the preservation of life from accidents in water was started in Amsterdam, in 1773, physician William Hawes began publicizing the power of artificial respiration as means of resuscitation of those who appeared drowned; this led to the formation, in 1774, of the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned the Royal Humane Society, who did much to promote resuscitation. Napoleon's surgeon, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, is credited with creating an ambulance corps, which included medical assistants, tasked to administer first aid in battle. In 1859 Jean-Henri Dunant witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, his work led to the formation of the Red Cross, with a key stated aim of "aid to sick and wounded soldiers in the field"; the Red Cross and Red Crescent are still the largest provider of first aid worldwide. In 1870, Prussian military surgeon Friedrich von Esmarch introduced formalized first aid to the military, first coined the term "erste hilfe", including training for soldiers in the Franco-Prussian War on care for wounded comrades using pre-learnt bandaging and splinting skills, making use of the Esmarch bandage which he designed.
The bandage was issued as standard to the Prussian combatants, included aide-memoire pictures showing common uses. In 1872, the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in England changed its focus from hospice care, set out to start a system of practical medical help, starting with making a grant towards the establishment of the UK's first ambulance service; this was followed by creating its own wheeled transport litter in 1875, in 1877 established the St John Ambulance Association "to train men and women for the benefit of the sick and wounded". In the UK, Surgeon-Major Peter Shepherd had seen the advantages of von Esmarch's new teaching of first aid, introduced an equivalent programme for the British Army, so being the first user of "first aid for the injured" in English, disseminating information through a series of lectures. Following this, in 1878, Shepherd and Colonel Francis Duncan took advantage of the newly charitable focus of St John, established the concept of teaching first aid skills to civilians.
The first classes were conducted in the hall of the Presbyterian school in Woolwich using a comprehensive first aid curriculum. First aid training began to spread through the British Empire through organisations such as St John starting, as in the UK, with high risk activities such as ports and railways; the primary goal of first aid is to prevent death or serious injury from worsening. The key aims of first aid can be summarized in three key points, sometimes known as'the three Ps': The overriding aim of all medical care which includes first aid, is to save lives and minimize the threat of death. Prevent further harm sometimes called prevent the condition from worsening, or danger of further injury, this covers both external factors, such as moving a patient away from any cause of harm, applying first aid techniques to prevent worsening of the condition, such as applying pressure to stop a bleed becoming dangerous. First aid involves trying to start the recovery process from the illness or injury,and in some cases might involve completing a treatment, such as in the case of applying a plaster to a small wound
Media related to Scouting Slides from the Scouts USA at Wikimedia Commons