WAR SURGERY

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume XI, Issue 528, 29 June 1915, Page 2

WAR SURGERY

Tho present war (writes- " Lens " m the '"New Statesman ') is furnishing only too tragic and complete an exposure of tho assertion that the antiseptic method wits a fraud,' and' that its own. begetters have abandoned it m favor of simple cleanliness. The aseptic method is very admirable m civil st|rgery, amid the resources of a specially constructed • theatre, with ample timo, pumerous assistants, and m the right kind of case. Surgeons trained therein applied their methods, as best they could, to the poor fellow who had lain for hours m the filthy mud of a trench before night fell and ho could be removed, and found that they failed. In the early part of the campaign, when our men were fighting over the notorious tetanus area ol the Marne, 40 per cent, of the wounded were infected with' tbe microbe' of Kitasato,' which forms spores of high resistance. When 'a wound is thus infected, what is the use of talking smooth things about asepsis? Until experience taught them our surgeons too often failed. Lister did not fail. He had every kind of horribly infected wound to treat m his wards, and he abolished sepsis — hospital gangrene, tetanus, and all. Sir Rickman Godlee, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Sir Watson Cheyne haye succeeded m bringing their long experience and their close ;personal acquaint Sice -with the methods and results of lister himself — who is already only a tradition to the younger surgeons — to beaT upon the surgical problems of this campaign, which are m some respects unprecedented Mr C. J. Bond, of Leicester, a surgeon long of international rank, and a student still, bas made independent observations which are m agreement with theirs. Results have steadily improved, and doubtless improve. Since a date m January no cases of tetanus at . all have occurred among our wounded. Even strong carbolic acid may be resisted for a time by the si. ores o. the bacillus tetani, and to attack it with anything less- potent is evidently useless. CaTeftd experiments are now being conducted with numerous antiseptics upon bac-llary cultures m the laboratory m order to compare the range and efficiency of their bactericidal power. Mea_iw_iile, carbolic acid, after very nearly 50 years, holds the field.