First Aid for Burns In This Article: Burns are ugly, they hurt,
and they are scary. But they can be treated with simple first
aid steps. In fact, they are the one injury that must be treated
before medical help arrives. The fact is that burns, unless
treated right away, will get worse. They'll get deeper below the
surface of the skin because the heat continues to do damage.
When it comes to burns, degree has nothing to do with
temperature. The terms first-, second-, and third-degree
identify the severity of a burn. Of those, first-degree is the
least harmful, and third-degree is the worst. You might not
think of your skin as an organ; after all, it hardly looks like
a kidney or a heart. But the skin is a system of the body, and
it's the largest organ of the body, too. It's the first shield
against aliens, a natural-growing, one-person army of
protection, germ warfare, and elimination. If something happens
to the skin, the rest of your body is much more vulnerable to
infection, shock, and disease. A burn, whic