SURGERY AND THE WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1856, 23 July 1918, Page 4

SURGERY AND THE WAR.

GREAT STRIDES MADE

REMARKABLE EXAMPLES,

The great,strides which are being made in war-tim6 surgery in the medical departments of the allied armies in France were referred to by Major C. L. Gibson, who was at the front with the medical unit from the New York Hospital, at a gathering of physicians at the New York Academy of Medicine. For preventing suppuration of wounds, he said, the famous treatment evolved by Dr. Alexis Carrel, of the Rockefeller Foundation, had now been largely superseded by a system of excision of all suspicious tissues, the development of which was credited to Dr. Pierre Duval, of the French Array.

Every bit of muscle which shows discolouration or -which does not, bleed when laid open is cut out by army surgeons in what appears a ruthless, brutal fashion, Major Gibson said. But despite the apparent brutality, he declared, this method of prophylaxis to lie marvellously efficient, in saving life, both in cases of gunshot wounds and where patients had been gassed. If men could bo go I to a casualty clearing station within eight hours after being wounded that was “almost a guarantee against infection.” Through the use of this method, gas gangrene was now almost a thing of the past. The wounds caused by the excisions were carefully swabbed out with ether, and then left wide open, being packed with paraffin oil and a 5 per cent, solution of iodine. This general practice on the part of British surgeons was improved upon by the French, who closed the wounds when the patients reached the dressing stations. Cultures were taken, and if anything suspicious developed the wounds were immediately opened again.

Another remarkable stride in military surgery was credited by Major Gibson to Dr. Petit de Villeon, a French army surgeon, who had, he said, evolved a method by which operations could be performed on the interior of a soldier’s lung as well as any other part of his body. There w r as a device, he exclaimed, which permitted the lungs to function almost normally during the operation, and out of 250 such cases performed at a hospital whore Dr. Gibson was, but one resulted fatally. It was impossible to compare war-time surgery with that encountered in civil practice, the doctor said. Soldiers who wore brought to the casualty clearing stations suffered severely from shock, and as a consequence initial doses of morphine ranging from a-half to a full grain were given them. The ordinary amount in civil medical cases was but a-quarter of a grain.