BROKEN IN THE WARS

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 90, 13 October 1916, Page 2

BROKEN IN THE WARS

SURGICAL TRIUMPHS

A number of London journalists in August were conducted over half a dozen typical military hospitals in the metropolitan area by Lieutenant-Colonel Woodwark, the Assistant Deputy Director of Medical Services for the London district.

The outstanding lesson of the military hospitals is that the .ravages of war are beitig more successfully combated than ever -before. Limbs aye being saved which formerly would have had to 'Ome off for gangrene, and cripples are being cured who formerly would have become crippled for life. The X-rays and the new antiseptic treatments have resulted in miracles.

The Royal Herbert Hospital at Shoot-ershill--which- has one of the finest X-ray equipments in the country, and has already stored since the beginning of the war over 20,000 valuable X-ray photographs taken by the staff--had recently an old case of bad bone-setting Ik 'the leg. The X-rays showed the two TOnes of the fracture to overlap no less tha^i 2£in., and the fracture was eight weekly old. The surgeons, cutting away uriiy an eighth of an inch of the two bones 'brought them together perfectly, as shown again by the X-rays, Wid fixed them in position with a steel plate, which remains screwed on the bone. The r.&n will be able to walk as well as ever. In the septic cases here one can witness the very process of limbs being saved from amputation by the intense injection intothe affected wound of peroxide of hydrogen or a steady draining of the wound by saline, the injured part being caged in muslin, so that it is reached by the filtered air. The war has produced many cases of complicated fracture. 'It is a common thing for a man to I.e. brought into hospital with both arms broken. The old-fashioned splints wout'l be an aggravation of the injury in such a case, and the special splints associated with the name of Mr. Jones, of .Liverpool, which give the arms an easy position and allow of a certain aimiunt of play, have proved a boon which, c:» r.ot be exaggerated. NERVE INJURIES."

Nerve injuries in all these hospitals afford interesting examples both of- surgery and electrical treatment. Sometimes simple massage will remove the local muscular paralysis in such cases; if not, the electrical treatment is given a chance. When everything else has failed the man is operated on. "All may be put right simply by freeing the nerve from the track of a bullet, and often it is possible to join together the two ends of a severed nerve and thus restore its conductivity. Or the surgeon may find that a piece of the nerve has been destroyed, and then, of course, he is in a dilemma. One resourceful surgeon found four inches of a nerve in an arm gone.

He telephoned to the , other London hospitals to enquire if an amputation was in prospect, and learned that a man was to have his leg off that afternoon. He asked that the limb, a healthy one, should be put at once in a saline bath and brought to him by taxi. Ho had his patient ready under an anaesthetic on the arrival of the limb, still blood-warm, and promptly transferred four inches of nerve from the amputated leg to the arm of the patient, with iho best results. Patients are disappointed that muscular paralysis does not vanish immediately the nerve is repaired. But recovery even then may be a matter of eight or nine months, and massage or electrical treatment must be perserved with all the time. It is gratifying, by the way, to learn,- now that so many thousands of persons every day are being given anaesthetics, that within a quarter of an hour of the completion of anaesthesia, after an operation which may have' lasted three or four hours, the patient can be brou;; 'it round completely enough tp enable him, if he wishes, to smoke a cigarette. TWO REMARKABLE OPERATIONS. Two of the most remarkable operations performed in the London military hospitals during the 'war have succeeded in removing a bullet from a man's lung in the one case and a piece of shrapnel from a man's heart in 'the other.. In the former case a young Irishman was ; shot in the abdomen with a bullet which struck upwards and lodged in the lung. It was found by the X-rays and removed, and the man is on the point of leaving! hospital almost quite well. In the second case the man complained of severe pain in the region of the heart, especially when hi bent, and tin had,great difficulty in walking. The rays showed a hard substance at the back of tho heart, and the surgeon, in 'the course of -the operation, had to put his hand behind the heart and take away the shrapnel— which was of the size of a halfpenny— with his fingers. Air was pumped into the man's lungs throughout, and all other precautions were taken to keep liim alive during this touch-and-go process. Fortunately there was no spurt of blood when the shrapnel was removed, and, the operation iiaving bten performed in March, the man is now perfectly well. Tho lung operation belongs to the Royal Herbert Hospital, and the heart operation to the Queen Alexandra Hospital at Millbank.

In at least two of the hospitals visited —and it was impracticable to see all the departments of all <A Ih'eiii—tht? journalists found stiff joints being treated by special exercises and training, and massage and electricity. There were stationary bicycles for. the ankles and the knees, an apparatus for giving the same kind of exercise that is given by rowing a boat, and a graduated wrist and grip machine. In one hospital, the Hammersmith, there was the eau courante bath, or, as it is sometimes called, the whirlpool bath—which is said to have been very successful in France.