New Faces For Old

Horowhenua Chronicle, 21 October 1916, Page 3

New Faces For Old

MARVELS OF MODERN SURGERY

By permission of the Director-Gen-eral, a party of journalists have concluded a tour of large military hospitals within the border of London metropolitan area. Writing of the work at the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich, where there ;e accommodation for close upon a thousand patients, and where the ltontgen rays apparatus is said to be the finest in the Kingdom, the P.A. suys that the discovery of a bad frac-

ture results where practicable in the

insertion of a steel plate. Formerly operations involving the removal of bone quite frequently meant the permanent shortening of a limb, bint this disadvantage is no longer found.

The form of paralysis known as wrist drop is diue either to a division of the nerve or to its being so affected that, for the time being, its conducting power is absent. These cases are numerous and the majority tage six or nine months for complete recovery.

Until the war the profession was practically without experience of this kind of nerve injury, and to meet the necessities of the moment the War Office have started departments in the various command depots where patients can get electrical treatment and message. The attention of the visitors was particularly called to cases of gas gangrene. One of these was that of a patient wounded in the shoulder on July 29, and brought into hospital on August 2. This is an instance of infection by bacilli From the soil driven in by a bullet, which may, have been a ricochet. Oxygen is the enemy of these aictive organisms—they cajinot live in it, but they thrive in wounds.

This particular paitient on admission was hopelessly septic, as gas-bubb-les were present anu skie to infection. A large opening was madte, and peroxide of hydrogen soaked through to the area in which the germs had found a- lodgment. Particles from mud-cov-ered clothing worn by the wounded Goldieirs may also produce this form of infection.

An alternative method of fighting the bacilli is to place a perforating tube in position and force the oxygen through it into the tissues. In a case of gas-gangrene, where the wound is large and superficial, a piece of gauzo may be U6ed and kept wet with peroxide, and yet the patient gets constant circulation of air.

The Military Hospital at Hammersmith is doing an astonishing work in the domain of medico-therapeutics. Instances are given in which our men attribute the peculiar character of their wounds to expanding or softnesed bullet*.

In electro-therapeutic treatment a current is utilised to educate the wasting muscles of a limb to re-act. In cases of trench foot the corrected position of both feet is secured by two operations, and after being nine months in bed a patient so treated is able to walk with ordinary boots. A soldier with complete paralysis, owing to a division of the main nerve, finds himself able once more to extend hie fingers by the simple transference by surgical operation of six muscles from the front to the back of the wrist. One featnre of the work seen by tho Press Association correspondent at the Wandsworth Hospital (formerly the Hoyal Victoria Patriotic School for Orphan Daughters of Soldiers) is the making of artificial coverings for men who have had severe facial injuries. Those masks are of copper, silvered, and then painted a flesh colour. An A.R.A. is getting some astonishing successes in this department.