MEDICAL SKILL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 86, 22 January 1942, Page 8

MEDICAL SKILL

SURGEONS’ NEW TRIUMPHS.

“ MQRE DIFFICULT. TO DIE.” LONDON, Dec. 20. “In future it is going to be more difficult to die.” This, reports George Bigwood in the “Daily Telegraph,” was the cheery assurance —sounding almost a- paradox in these days—of the Commandant of a military hospital which I lately visited to learn something of tlic new weapons with which medical science is combating disease and disablement. In earlier wars tetanus, dysentery and paratyphoid have devastated, the ranks. -Surgical shock and gas gangrene frustrated the efforts of the surgeon. Epidemics of cerebro-spinal fever caused a serious wastage of manpower. To-day the same problems test an improved medical skill, and new forms of treatment, the result of laborious research, have reduced non-battle casualties to a fraction of what they were in the last war. Then the death rate from cerebro-spinal fever, for instance, varied) between 40 and 60 per cent. In this w’ar, so far, with the use of sulphonamides, the rate has been only 2.5 per cent., and it is likely to be further reduced.

Sulphonamides, recently recruited to the pharmacopoeia, was described to me as probably the great medical discovery of the age. It is the agent which will destroy the growth of bacteria in the body, and compounds lor the treatment of malaria, sleeping sickness and, other diseases have already been used with satisfactory results. Typhoid and Paratyphoid. Inoculation has greatly lessened the incidence of disease generally. In the Middle East and elsewhere cases of typhoid and paratyphoid fevers have virtually disappeared, and not one British soldier actively immunised against tetanus has been reported as suffering from it. It is interesting to note hew changes in the equipment of armies and the order of battle influence the character of both battle and non-battle casualties. While mechanisation with increased mobility has removed some of the dangers associated with, trench warfare, high-speed methods of attack have multiplied surgical cases. Medical men whole-hea-rtedly approve of the protection afforded by the steel helmet. There is a crash-helmet for Army motor-cyclists, too, but apparently it has been too commonly neglected, and where its use remained optional, I was told, neglect of it yielded a high proportion of head in juries. The surgery of the nerve presents its own problems. At the neurological hospitals nerves divided by bullet or shell splinter arc joined not always by stitching with threads of silk, as formerly, hut by concentrated pi asm an, although occasionally sutures are necessary. For research into the regeneration of nerves, the Army have released a professional man who will be employed by the British Medical JResearch Council; and the scientific departments of the universities,, too, are, focussing attention on it. Treating Convalescents. Treatment of hemorrhage and wound shock by blood transfusion is a field of medical activity, which has been developed into a highly organised, service. The British Army has a “blood hank” of 93,000 voluntary “depositors” and stored blood and its products are sent to the fighting forces by air if need he.

The science of psychology has its part to play in the treatment of the convalescent soldier. Hospital staffs relieve the tedium of the last' stages of recovery by interesting the soldier in some form of handicraft.

From all I saw and learned it is plain that from the stretcher-bearers in the forward fighting zone, through the hospitals, to the convalescent depots, the Army medical service is preserving for the. British race a generation of young lives which, though impaired for a time, can he restored to a now vigour and a happy future.