A MIRACLE OF THE WAR

Evening Star, Issue 16624, 5 January 1918, Page 2

A MIRACLE OF THE WAR

■ HOW A LAYMAN CONQUERED PAIN. I STORY OF A WONDERFUL ■" > ANESTHETIC. , "How are you going to anajsthetise a wound twice the size of a beefsteak by injection? What the wounded soldiers in Europe want is something you can slosh on by the bjclftotful." ' That was the protest voiced by Gordon Edwards, " the man who conquered pain," a few weeks [ after the world war broke out. How ho j found the solution, how he spent nearly j two years before European doctors ox ( Governments would listen to him, how he has revolutionised the treatment of battle wounds, is vividly told by Edgar Ansel Mowrer in ' Collier's.' Edwards.was talking with his medical friends about allaying pain through some 'sort of local anesthetic—"something you can spray on a raw surface," he explained, just the opposite of the usual method 01 obtaining anjesfchesia by injection. Has friends shrugged their' 6houl- j ders. i But Edwards, a former engineer, and j half accidental experimenter in medicine | and pain-allaying methods, already, after 18 months' study, the inventor of a. satis- i factory solution to be used by injection, went back to his work. Later on he dis- ! covered a way in which his now solution oould _ be modified so as to fib it for an- { plication to external wounds. However, ! though he felt that his theories were cor- i rect, he wanted actual proof of what he ! believed." He inquired at the big New i York hospitals, audi finally found an old ! woman with leg ulcers, and persuaded ! the reluctant doctor in charge to try hie j solution. When he next saw the doctor I the man was no longer sceptical. " Ed- j wards," he said, "leg ulcers are a bcsvh-i dal to the profession. . We havo nevjr I been able .to do anything with them; But I have treated successfully 25 cases with your solution. The patients do not suffev at all, and get well in no time." It wis enough. He had only one course before him. He hurriedly named his solution "Nikalgin"— "victory over .pain " —choosing Greek as a concession to the profession. Then he made up as much concentrated solution as ho could carrv, and landed in England in November, 1914. " The reception Edwards received might have been foreseen by anyone not so new as he to the healing profession," says the writer. "In a word, he x was ignored. A wall of indifference—bland, cruel, unbelievable, when so many thousands of men were crying aloud in agony for want of painallaying antesthetics—rose before him wherever he went. It was the same in j France as in England, where everything I was against him, but chiefly two facts: he was not a doctor and he was an American. 'Patent medicine faker!' was the least of the epithets applied. Ho stayed a week in London without getting* to demonstrate the value of his solution. And, indeed, during the 18 succeeding months he remained for many a surgeon the 'nickelgin fellow—that mad American engineer.' Finally he secured a letter i from the surgeon-general and crossed the Channel to France. The battle of the Yser was on, and train after train of British wounded was returning from Ypres. But that mad? no difference to the surgeons, who turned him out of Abbeville, and later out of Boulogne. December found him in Paris, alone and ignorant of the city, the French language, and what he had better do." A CHANCE TO PROVE IT. Chance enabled him to give a demonstration of his solution at the large Hospital BoufEpn, before some 50 surgeons, " one of wh pn\ was a very g rea t surgeon, indeed." "When Edwards entered the operating room and found his august spectators waiting for him, he suddenly remembered with horror that leg ulcers were not war wound's, and- that ho had really never tested his solution at all. But he turned his attention to the case. A soldier's hip and thigh had been scooped out by an exploding shell. The nurses bared the enormous wound. The American rapidlv soaked a great piece of cotton with nikafgin and applied it to the raw flesh. A kindly old surgeon drew the patient's attention to another matter. After a few minutes the engineer removed the cotton. "'ls anaesthesia complete?' the very great surgeon asked. " 'I believe so.' "In a flash the Frenchman had jabbed a bl *- oi glass tubing into the very heart of the wdund, probing vigorously into the live flesh. \ The doctors gasped. Edwards went white, then quickly flushed' with pleasure, for the patient had not moved a muscle, tranquilly going on with the story of how ho had come by his wound He felt nothing at all! The very great surgeon, visibly disturbed, tried another case. The result was absolutely concluSl ! e l.- J 't n!Ssthesia throu e h nikalgin was established. The very great surgeon withdrew hastily, muttering 'Extraordinary' Extraordinary J' with great rapidity." SUCCESS AT VERDUN." _ It is just as well not to count the suffering that might have been saved between December 11, 1914, and the summer of 1916, when General Nivelle, then commanding the Second French Armv, invited Edwards to visit the Verdun front and demonstrate his solution. For in all that time Edwards, almost penniless and dependent upon gifts from Americans for his supplies,, tried in every way' to brin<r his discovery to the attention of the medical corps of France and England. At Verdun ho "revolutionised wound dressing for the surgeons of the Second Army." " He reached the building late one evening. After dinner he'said to the staff: 'To-morrow bring all your worst cases of external wounds into the operating room. I'll treat .them each one, and after that you can take the pressure jets and the solution and do it yourself.' Never was brought together a moro terrible collection of maimed, charred, and mangled living bodies than the one in the operating room' the following morning. • The surgeons. used to the woTst, grew pale at the sight of some of the cases. Edwards, the layman, had never imagined anything so awful. Twice during the morning's work ho nearly fainted ; but he did not faint. After a few comparatively simple cases the attendants wheeled forward a closelyswathed figure half upright in a chair. It was a victim of liquid fire. The head was almost entirely enveloped in gauze. The doctors liad not dared to put the patient to bed when ho arrived the day before. When brought into the ojjerating room he sat propped up on cushions, oblivious to everything but sensation, heedless of everything but the pain. "'Now, I ask you, M. Edwards,' the chief surgeon said, slowly, 'what can you do with a case like that? That breast must be dressed, or&he man will die of poisoning. Yet, with the nerves exposed as they aTe, if I attempt to remove that apron of gauze he will die of pain. Can you do anything for him?' "' I'll try,' Edwards answered, already doubtful of the task. " Gently he began to spray the chest, and for fully 10 minutes moistened the gauze, "until it dripped with solution. Then, while a nurse gently lifted the bandaged chin until the eyes were fixed on the ceiling, the chief surceon bag an at the neck to peel down the gauze, while Edwards' nover ceased playing a stream of anrosthetic on to the raw flesh. "An inch! A MIRACLE! " The surgeons, perspiring. looked quickly at the patient. He had not moved. Another inch! The surgeon, emboldened and fearful lest the momentary effect should pass, stripped away the gause from the burn in a single movement. And those strange, frightened eyes never left the ceiling. The patient did not even realise that his wounds were being treated. He felt nothing. There was no sound in the operating room while the dressing proceeded. When it was over the attendants slowly wheeled awav the rebandaged figure—back to life from the very vale of agony that slopes down into df'atli. For if his wounds could be dressed and the pain obviated ho was saved. "There is no need to describe the enthusiasm of the surgeons, many of whom had had their nights turned to hell through brooding* on tho suffering they daily, inflicted. Another soldier, with a suppurating hole through his thigh a foot

long, -which necessitated the passing of strips of gauze through the tunnel, usually suffered agonies. This day 'ho announced that he would rather die than, undergo dressing another time. "'I promise you it will not hurt a Edwards said earnestly. "Tiie man looked up, and in his eyes the American read the infinite hostility of the long-deceived sufferer against those hale an-3 hearty persons who lake name o** others' pain In vain. Yet wdfch. was the effect of nikalgin" that he permittee the suvgeons to cleanse the wound—sawing fresh gauze hack and forth through it, and this without a quiver. Until he saw the fresh bandages in position he refused to believe that the old ones had been removed. " Leaving with the doctors of the Verdun front all the solution he had on hand, Edwards-returned to England. It was at Manchester a month later that a, letter .reached him from the chief surgeon of the Second Army, asking him to return, with more solution, at once. The letter continued in what, to Edwards seemod immortal words: 'Wounds have healed normally without suppuration and with a total absence of all secretion.' " Once mora he met the surgeon inspector. "' How much solution have vou brought?' 'asked the latter. "'Twenty-five a hundred litres.' " The Frenchman tossed his hands in dismay. ' A hundred litres will last one hospital <y.ily 10 days. What shall we do when thay are gone? What about the other hospitals? We must have enough nikalgin to keep the entire army flooded. Whatever is useful in one military hospital is needed in all of them.' "By December, 1916, his solution was in use on the Somme front as well. Nikalgiri won admission into the 'great military hospital of Paris-, Val de Grace, where an eminent Russian surgeon, a woman, took it up eagerly. Itaiy's medical men, seemingly less sluggish than those of France and England, are adopting it to-day. " Every day testimonials reach him from the most varied sources. Most of them were written by surgeons, some of whom are world famous. Some of the letters are from _ soldiers, and their'letters are like tangible prayers, seeming withal to cry out at all who blocked Gordon Edwards."