MODERN SURGERY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 32, 8 February 1943, Page 4

MODERN SURGERY

—. • — NEW DEVELOPMENTS TREATMENT OF WOUNDED "Some Aspects of the Practice of Surgery" was the title of a luncheon address delivered to the Auckland Rotary Club to-day by Mr. Alfred Smith Gray, F.R.C.S., of Auckland. Mr. Gray said that surgery was divided into three departments— diagnosis, operative investigation and treatment. In discussing the field of treatment, Mr. Gray illustrated some present-day developments by stressing two things that had revolutionised the treatment of septicaemia. One was the introduction of the sulpha group of drugs. The development of sulphanilamide and the allied group constituted the greatest advance for many years not only in medical but in surgical treatment. Countless numbers of wounded men in the present war owed their lives to the efficacy of this drug, he said. "The one small gleam of brightness in an otherwise grim picture is the immensely lowered mortality rate in war wounds due to the r*> suits achieved by treatment with sulphanilamide," Mr. Gray said. "In what we describe as the battle of the tissues this drug has provided us with the spearhead of attack against invading organisms, and whether taken by mouth or applied to the wound, sulphanilamide acts as a violent poison to these invading organisms without destroying the tissues of the body." Mr. Gray said the other development he had referred to, and which had revolutionised treatment, was the modern transfusion system. While sulphanilamide was the spearhead of attack, the transfusion system was the method by which the supplies and reserves of the body were maintained. The luncheon was held in Milne and Choyce's reception hall.