ELECTRIFIED PATIENTS

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16146, 26 February 1918, Page 4

ELECTRIFIED PATIENTS

* NEW SURGICAL METHODS. "The best equipped electrical workshop in Europe for repairng injured soldiers," was tlie description an R.A.M.C. colonel recently applied to the Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxlord. Alter a visit to the infirmary 1 tully agree with him (writes the medical correspondent of the London "Dany -Mail"). An electrical apparatus which totally numbs the severest nerve pains while at the same time gradually bringing about a permanent cure, a machino wlncli will cure acute "water on thc knee" in one twenty-minute ''exposure," and another which charges the patieint up - like a storage battery are only a few of the wonders f saw. A young soldier suffering from ceasoJess pain in one hand, caused by an obscure injury to a nerve, was treated by an ordinary-looking electric battery from which two wires led, one being held in the injured htoid and the other attached to a metal plate at the back of the neck. The current stops the pain in the hand, tho periods of freedom increasinc after each treatment.

For the removal of wasting growths a patient is connected with a special type of battery. When he is "fully charged" the operator brings a needle-pointed metal instrument almost into touch with the tissue to be removed. A flamo of electricity jumps from the patient to the instrument, aind thc growth is instantaneously destroyed. Through the free passage afforded to heat rays the germ in the growth literally "cooked" bv tho electric dischargo being concentrated on so small an area, thus producing a high-curre»nt density. The effect can be seen during an opera,tion as a grey coagulation or destruction of the tissue.

The? problem of how to exercise electricity on paralysed muscles without unduly stimulating the healthy ones l\as been solved by means of a newly perfected system of condensers, which cause the injured muscles slowly to contract and relax, while tho hoalthy ones remain quiesce«nt.