SURGICAL OPERATION DURING AIR RAID

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 86, 9 October 1915, Page 6

SURGICAL OPERATION DURING AIR RAID

During one of the Zeppelin raids on the east coast of England, a surgeon of one of the places visited was performing the operation of tracheotomy at a nursing home. When the German aircraft came over the town the electric current was at once cut off. All the lights went out suddenly, and this, too, at the very moment when the surgeon in question was opening the windpipe. Fortunately, it was not the first attack delivered against this place, a fishing and sea bathing resort. Taught by experience, the operator had made it a matter of habit to warn his nurses and other assistants that lamps should be kept ready for use during all operations which had to be undertaken at night. This precaution may have saved the small patient's life. With but a trifling delay the tracheotomy was completed, and the child is now doing well. To have performed so delicate an operation in such circumstances, remarks the Lancet, is a considerable feat, for the raid was a serious one, a good many bombs were dropped, several people were killed and injured, and the feeling at the moment was naturally one of intense apprehension. Some of the bombs hit a house in the neighbourhood, the residence of another well-known practitioner. Luckily no one was at home at the time, and the medical practitioner got off with the destruction of a certain amount of property. The experience recorded will no doubt ensure the taking by medical men generally of the precautions 'which iD this case had been fortunately observed.

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