GROWING SKIN WHOLESALE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3073, 8 May 1917, Page 5

GROWING SKIN WHOLESALE

That new skin .may be grown over very large surfaces from which it has been burned away, is demonstrated by a cure for burns used successfully in French army hospitals by Dr. Barthe do Sandfort. A similar cure is said to be in use in Germany. The treatment is the essence of simplicity, being merely an extension of that used by a boy when he sticks court-plaster over a burned, finger. The air, with its troublesome germs, is thoroughly excluded until Nature has bad time to grow a new coating, which she does thoroughly and quickly when she is not interfered with. Notwithstanding its extremo simplicity, the method has cost its inventor twenty-two years of experimentation. The temporary coating used is a special mixture of paraffin and resin; and there are yet few who can prepare it effectively. •Mr. Arno Dosch-Fleurot thus describes tho treatment in "The Worldis Work (New York, December) :— "The cure is simple and easy to understand. \ had best describe it as I first saw it applied. A young soldier with his hands and forearms bundled was led in by an orderly and seated' on a stool. A nurse removed the handages and the burned skin. She washed off the pus with a small rubber hose, and dried tho flesh with an electric hotair drier. Then she brought an atomiser filled with a hot liquid. This she sprayed carefully over the hand and forearm, so that they were soon entirely covered with a soft, white, waxlike covering. While it was still hot, she laid strips of thin cotton batting over it and painted this with the Same liquid until the whole wound was sealed in under the drying liquid. Then she wrapt it up in thicker cotton batting, and went to work on the other hand. Whatever tho victim may havo felt about it, this was a very simple case. I, saw the hands a week later and they were covered with new, supple skin. It is riot quite so simple a matter when tho burns arc deeper, but the process is always tho same, and does not vary on account of tho degreo of tho burn." j