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[[underline]] INTRODUCTION [[/underline]]

The following pages are [[underline]] not [[/underline]] a manual on the care and conservation of the monuments and materials of culture.  Such a manual would run to many hundreds of pages, would contain much that is so tentative or disputable as to be dangerous for all except experts, and would be almost useless except to those trained by practical experience.

What [[underline]] is [[/underline]] attempted here is a guide for giving First Aid to buildings, monuments, the contents of libraries, art museums, and scientific collections, which have been damaged or put in jeopardy by the operations of war, and are in danger of further damage and of disintegration.

The inspiration has been the famous definition of the American Red Cross First Aid Text-Book: "First aid is the immediate, temporary care given in case of accident or sudden illness before the services of a physician can be secured."  With that definition in mind, the series of notes which follow has two aims:-
(1) To lay down some principles and precepts (the "don'ts" as frequent as the "do's") which may enable a reasonably intelligent person, with some mechanical sense and an orderly mind, so to deal with cultural material as to prevent its taking further harm until an expert can get to work.  Also, as experts in one type of object are not always equally knowledgeable in others, even an expert may find here something which will be useful to him in fields with which is he un-