THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3339, 13 March 1918, Page 54

THE SKETCHER.

THE MAN WHO CONQUERED PAIN.

By Edgar Ansel Mowjizs, >a CoJlier's Weekly. " War has always meant pain. We can do nothing to silence it," say the doctors. All in Europe and almost all in America have accepted this, impotently thrusting thsir fingers into their spiritual ears lest they be unnerved utterly. But they have not been able to shut out the consciousness of the suffering—often unvoiced—on a thousand battlefields and on a million beds. But' one American has refused to fold his hands and listen. "Pain," he declared, "is man's enemy. It must be conquered like a disease. For it is the most terrible of diseases, and no one shall count the toll it takes of human lives." His name is Gordon Edwards, and he was born in Milwaukee some 30 odd years ago. His father, a railroad contractor, was an old-school, hard-headed frontier type of American who had shot Indians. In 1905 Edwards, was graduated from Stanford University as an electrical engineer. For some years he stuck to his trade, beginning at the b'ottom, sharing dinner pail and overalls with his fellow mechanics and labourers. But he went slowly. Finally, he decided to leave power plant and shop, and began to sell bonds for a San Francisco house. The first month he made 500dol. But he had no liking for business. —He Finds His Mission.— One day he heard some young doctors lamenting that there existed no perfect anaesthetic for dentistry. There would be fame and a fortune, they said, for whoever could discover what was needed. Their words—or, rather, the possibilities their words! disclosed —set the ex-engineer bond salesman thinking very hard. Like air the world outside the profession, Edwards had unconsciously assumed without precisely thinking it that there must be three or four good anaesthetics. The lack of any Avas certainly worth investigating. So he read a little medicine and listened to doctors, gathering the rudiments of physiology and anatomy, picking up the general terms quickly, and then neglecting everything in those fat leather-bound medical books which did not treat the special problem of local anaesthesia. There was not a. great deal to read. He learned what anyone else might have done —that there existed at the disposal of the cal profession, for purposes of local injection, practically nothing but cocaine. And cocaine, injected in the smallest quantities, is always dangerous. 'lt is a poison and may cause sudden death; it is "dope," a narcotic drug, and may breed an appetite worse than death. Most surgeons wisely refrain from using it. Edwards began diligent work in a laboratory. Many known substances have analgesic or pain-allying properties. But for certain other reasons they may not be used. Edwards chose the most likely of these (which- for obvious reasons I do not name) and set to work to eliminate the disagreeable properties, working for something to be injected with a hypodermic syringe.

After a year of research Edwards gave up bond-selling and went to New York. By the beginning of 1914, after 18 months' search, he had developed a satisfactory injection. But a few months more taught him the fatuity of supposing he could get it adopted immediately or. even within a short term of years. , Local anaesthetics demand a new and slow technique. Older physicians, used to ether and chloroform, prefer the quicker methods of complete anaesthesia, and will not learn a new method. So Edwards abandoned his search for a general anaesthetic, and returned to that phase of the problem which had. first attracted his attention. "I am. through," he said. " I have wasted two years, and I have debts. Now I shall go in seriously for dental anaesthesia 'and get back some of my money." Just then war descended over the face of half the earth. Almost immediately Edwards began to hear the sound of pain. A few days later he was talking with his medical friends about the need for a local anaesthetic—"something you can spray on a raw surface," he explained. "Nonsense," they answered, "you can obtain anaesthesis only by injection because part of the effect is obtained by pressure on the nerves." He protested. "How are you going to anaesthetise a- wound twice the size of a baefsteak by injection? What the wounded soldiers in Europe want is something you can slosh on by the bucketful." The doctors shrugged their shoulders. One September day, when Edwards was sitting in the Red Cross office in New York among the bustle of those preparing to leave for the field of war, w f ondering what he had" better do, it came to him in a flash of insight just how he could modifv his injection solution to make it applicable to external wounds. He hurried home, trembling with excitement, but exalted by an inexplicable certainty of success. The course of his life during the two years previous, since the day he heard about the need for a local anaesthetic, seemed to have been mysteriously shaped to this moment's revelation. For there in his laboratory in the first September of the Avar he knew exactly how the drugs should be prepared, and already half saw himself working among Europe's wounded. When the new solution was complete, however, his confidence had subsided. He wanted actual proof of what- he believed. One after the other, he telephoned to the big New York hospitals and he found at Vanderbilt Clinic an old woman with leg ulcers, and persuaded the reluctant physician to try out his solution. Leg ulcers, it seems, are common among oli women, and arc extremely painful. Nikalgiu.— When he next saw the physician at Vanderbilt the man was no longer scepti-

cal. "Edwards,' he cried, "leg ulcers are a scandal to the profession. We have never been able to do anything with them. But I have treated successfully 25 cases with your solution. . The patients do not suffer at all, and they get well in no time." It was enough. Cases vary, but pain is always much the same. Gordon Edwards possessed the secret of relieving pain in all external wounds. Thousands of men in Europe were suffering agonie3 from external wounds, and only he could help them. It was clear that he had but one course before him. JHe hurriedly named his solution "nikalgin "■—victory over pain,—choosing Greek as a concession to the profession. Then he gathered his belongings together, made up as much concentrated solution as he could carry, and took ship for Europe. In November, 1914, he landed in England. What Might Have Been If I were a writer of popular fiction I should now be nearing the end of my story. From this point on it should be described how Gordon Edwards was received with open arms, and how success followed on success. But let us return to London in November of 1914, and more specifically to a world of officialdom—surgeons, hospitals, soldiers, and suffering,— whereof confusion was king. The Surgeon-general in the British War Office listened politely to what Edwards had to say, and then suggested that the discoverer go home and return to England after the war. " But my solution is meant to relieve the suffering of soldiers !" "Try the civil hospitals." "They have no wounded."

" And we have no time. For the preI sent we cannot undertake to investigate your solution, whatever its merits." Edwards stayed a week in London without opporunity even for demonstrating the value of his solution. Everything was against him, but chiefly two facts : he was not a doctor, and lie was an American. "Patent-medicine faker " was the least of the epithets applied. And indeed during the 18 succeeding months he remained for many a surgeon the "nickel-gin fellow, that mad American engineer. In London no one took the slightest interest in him or in his solution. Finally, he secured a letter from the Surgeon-general and crossed the Channel to France. The battle of the Yser was ou, and train after train of British wounded was returning from Ypre3. But that made no difference to the surgeons, who turned him out of and later out of Boulogne. December found him in Paris, alone and ignorant of the citv, the French language, j and what he had better do. A lucky encounter permitted him to give a demonstration of his solution at the large Hopital Buffon, before some 30 surgeons, one of whom was a very great surgeon indeed". i When Edwards entered the operating ' room and found his august spectators waiti ing for him he suddenly remembered with horror that leg ulcers were not war wounds and that he 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 rapidly soaked a great piece of cotton with nikalgin 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. "Is anaesthesia complete?" the very great surgeon asked. I "I believe so." In a flash the Frenchman had jabbed a bit of glass tubing into the very heart of the wound, 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 he had come by his wound. He felt nothing at all"! The very great surgeon, visibly disturbed, tried another case. The result was absolutely conclusive. Anaesthesia through nikalgin was established. The very great surgeon withdrew hastily, muttering, 'Extraordinary ! Extraordinary!" with great rapidity. Edwards will always remember that day, December 11, 1914, for it gave him confidence in himself without which he could never have held under what was to come. The other surgeons were warm in their expressions of appreciation. But they would not urge that nikalgin be adopted elsewhere or do anything to aid in making it known. Later the very great surgeon said privately to Edwards that war, after all, means pain, and that an analgesic is too great a luxury for days of suffering and confusion. It is incredible but true that nothing permanent came from, this { demonstration. The American Ambulance at Neuilly was not even interested in Edwards. Early in 1915, on the advice of friends, he sent some solution to various hospitals at the British front. It was not acknowledged, and when in April he finally managed to reach the Headquarters at Saint-Omer he found that it had not even been tried. He returned to London and tried new tactics. Establishing a producing laboratory, he sent out letters to nearly every hospital in England. To such as replied he sent samples and instructions for the use of nikalgin. A few surgeons tried it; all who did wrote for more. Edwards did not remain long in any one spot,-but went from town to town, talking with anyone whom he could interest, infinitely patient and untiring. He went repeatedly to Boulogne and, now that ho was a little better known, succeeded in persuading a few military surgeons to listen to him. He began to receive orders for varying quantities of solution, and filled them out of his own slender resources and, when these were exhausted, from the pockets of various Americans who had faith in him. Sometimes he did not know where his next dollar was coming from, but always it put in an appearance at the opportune moment. Then in July so many physicians recommended nikalgin and asked to be supplied with it that the

[ War Office officially adopted it for ths I British ' army. This marked the second j date in Edwards's long struggle. Back in Paris the same month the engi- | neer continued his exertions. Poor though | he was, he perceived that he had made ; a mistake in trying to sell his solution j to the British. * Though it had finally : been adopted by the War Office, already : it wa.3 being refused to army surgeons. : Nikalgin is chiefiy composed of two not ! uncommon substances. Edwards made no i secret of the composition, withholding j only the manner of preparation. i To British surgeons who asked for nikalgin the War Office supplied raw materials, and suggested that these be I made up in the various hospitals as a ; substitute. The substitute, once made, did . | not anaesthetise, and it cost the War Office 6s a gallon more than Edwards's price. ! Bitt thnt did not prevent—to this day does not prevent—the War Office from dei daring to many surgeons that nikalgin was too expensive to be generally used! It seemed hopeless. But during those long months one thought was uppermost in Edwards's mind : My solution will rej lieve suffering which apparently nothing 1 else can allay; hence it must—MUST—? i eventually commend itself to the doctors. Meantime, for the soldiers' sake, it shall be used. Accordingly he filled all British orders direct and sent the bills to the War Office. This was sheer presumption, and he waited a long time. But the bills were always j>aid. In Paris, however, he j decided on a radical step: he offered to 1 supply the entire French army with nikalgin for nothing. How this engagement, if accepted, could be fulfilled he had no notion; he relied on his star, the power which seemed to have guided him to the discovery of his wonderful solution, and led him from California to war-stricken Europe. Never has his faith been misplaced. He has never had to refuse a single request for nikalgin. Private individuals (Americans) have always furnished the funds. Miss Morgan to the Rescue. —

Edwards ceased, however, dealing "with, officers and officials. In the Paris hospitals he became friends with several surI geons. A famous Japanese bacteriologist tried nikalgin and liked it. He was speci- | ally interested in the treatment of gas I gangrene. In September he wrote to I Edwards: "I beg to inform you that after a number of experiments conducted by me I have verified the antisepic power of your nikalgin solution. The experiments have been made with streptococci, staphylococci, and the lockjaw germ." Four days later a Russian wrote: "I never noticed any poisonous cases when nikalgin had been used." These words revealed possibilities unguessed by the discoverer but as they did not seem practical, Edwards sighed and forgot the double testimony. One person shares the glory of Edwards's mission. Miss Anne Morgan went to Paris to aid the French. She has supplied the money for hundreds of gallons of nikalgin. He has never called on her in vain. When they first met. in March, 1916, told her of the blank wall which seemed to encompass him. " You must be mistaken, Mr Edwards. It is unbelievable that the French refuse to accept nikalgin as a gift. These surgeons are open-minded and intelligent. Either you have not presented the matter in the right way to them or your solution is not all you claim." "Nikalgin does all I claim for it. Suppose you try, Miss Morgan." She. tried. Three months later the remarkable woman confessed that she had knocked unheard at 50 doors. No one cared enough to investigate. In July, 1916, Edwards received an invitation to give a demonstration at the Belgian front, in the operating room at La Panne Edwards saw in five minutes the need for a new technique. A year previous he had ceased the old unscientific and extravagant application to wounds of cotton soaked -in solution, and adopted an atomiser. This was a mistake. Too little nikalgin reached the wound through layers of gauze and pus. What was needed evidently was a pressure jet which would throw a small but steady stream of liquid with force enough to penetrate through bandage and infection, to the raw flesh. When he returned to Paris he invented such a jet, solving thereby his last technical problem. Meantime Miss Morgan had been busy. A sudden invitation from General Nivelle, then commanding the Second Army, to visit the Verdun front, drove all other thoughts from the engineer's. mind. --A Terrible Test.— In the Verdun hospitals Edwards 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 once, and after that you can take the pressure jets and the solution and do it yourself." IN ever was brought together a more terrible collection of maimed, charred, and mangled living bodies than the one in the operating room the following morning. The surgeons, used to the worst, "grew pale at the sight of some of the cases. Edwards, the layman, had never imaghied anything so awful. Twice during t the morning's work be 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. One hand and arm had been burned black, and they, too, were partly covered with white bandages. But there was worse. The victim bad been struck in the chest by the . fluid, and the result surpassed Dante's imaginings. A sheet of gauze 3.Bin square covered a burn on the Doay tiiafc stretched from neck to navel. The outlines of the gaping hole wherein the flesh had been burned away showed through the stuff, which in places was stuck to the flesh beneath. What one could < see of the face, black, spotted with flaming red holes, grey where the flesh had been reduced to a cinder, shocked the spectators

almost to nausea. For from out this frightful ruin stared two living eyes! ■Chance had saved them for the owner, perhaps at the expense of hand and arm. Within that roasted heap of flesh life stirred sluggishly. Suffering had been so intense, shock so unsettling, that the man had been reduced to a haif-bestial organism capable of no sensation but pain, lhe expression was as vacant as that of an idiot, hiding nothing but fear. For in a dozen places large nerves were completely exposed. The doctors had not dared to put the patient to bed when he arrived the day before. When brought into the operating room he sat propped up on cushions, oblivious to everything but sensations, heedless of everything but the pain that was slowly driving conscious-ness-from the devastated dwelling. "Now I ask you, Monsieur Edwards," the chief surgeon said slowly, "what can you do with a case like that? That breast must be dressed, or the man will die of poisoning. Yet, with the nerves exposed as they are, if I attempt to remove that apron 'of gauze stuck to the cooked flesh, he will die of pain. Can you do anythin? 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 surgeon began at the neck to peel down the gauze, while Edwards never ceased playing a stream of anaesthetic on to the raw flesh.

An inch! The surgeon, 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 gauze 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 m the operating room while the dressing proceeded. When it was over the attendants slowly wheeled away the rebandaged figure—back to life ' from the very vale of agony that slopes down into death. For if his wounds could be dressed and the pain obliviated, he 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 the suffering they daily inflicted. Another soldier, with a suppurating hole through his thigh Ift ldng, which necessitated the passing of . strips of gauze through the tunnel, usually suffered agonies. On this day he announced that he would rather die' than undergo dressing another time. "I promise you it will not hurt a bit," Edwards said earnestly. The man looked up, and in his eyes the American read the infinite hostility of the long-deceived sufferer against those hale and hearty persons who take the name of others' pain in vain. Yet such was the effect of nikalgin that he permitted the surgeons to cleanse the wound by sawing fresh gauze back 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 seemed immortal words: "Wounds have healed normally without suppuration and with a total absence of all secretion." It was a bombshell. Why, wondered the engineer, had he never followed up the information contained in the first letters from the Russian and the Japanese? If nikalgin was good against gas gangrene, if applied in time, it would naturally serve splendidly against ordinary pus! , Once more he met the surgeon inspector. "How much solution have you brought?" asked the latter. "Twenty-five gallons—about a hundred litres." The Frenchman tossed his hands in dismay. " A hundred litres will last one ■hospital only ten days. What shall we do when they 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." Edwards nearly choked .with emotion. "I have been waiting two years for someone to say just that. Yoir are the first. I'll not fail you. How much solution do you require for immediate needs?" "A minimum of five hundred litres and as much more regularly.*' "You shall have it as soon as I can get it made up. And from now on 1 shall keep you supplied." He stayed long enough in Pan's to cable Miss Morgan for funds; then, certain of her reply, went on to London. Before the solution was ready the money was in his hands. By December, 1916, his solution was in use on the Somme front as well. Aside from the futile attempts of the British War Office to substitute, difficulties disappeared one by one. Nikalgin won admission into the great militai'y hospital of Paris, Val de Grace, where an eminent Russian surgeon, a woman, took it up eagerly. During a short visit to the Italian front in May of this year, Edwards gavo demonstrations of his discovery in several hospitals, and the product, new to the surgeons, excited their wonder and admiration. Italy's medical mon, seemingly less sluggish than those of France and England, are adopting it to-day. The Italian Ministry of War has only to ask for it .and nikalgin will be sent to Italy free of charge for the duration of the •war, as a "gift from the United States." 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. —Edwards's Rejvyard.— Edwards to-day, having accepted the burden of furnishing free of charge two immense armies, is no richer —in fact, he is poorer—than he was when he first bewail his hunt for an anaesthetic. He has never made one cent. He ia at the present moment filling the demands of five of the largest Paris hospitals, and 20 smaller hospitals at Nice, Lyons, and other points. Only the Russian and the new American armies remain to be supplied. Nikalgin can be used for temporary relief and to permit painless dressings of all external wounds. As an antiseptic it has apparently no. rival.' Tom Foster, a little English soldier, was dying. His leg, amputated at the thigh, was wasting away slowly under an inch of loathsome green pus. A new operation higher up already tempted the surgeons. But Tom preferred to die. Yet, once the pain was quelled, his cure was so marvellous that Edwards, entering the operating room the third day, found the boy laughingly raising his stump in both hands while the nurse stripped away the bandages. When the flesh finally appeared it was-.jred and clean as a new cut- All infection had disappeared. In a week" Tom Foster no longer interested the surgeons. How much of this strange healing power of nikaligin is due to its direct antiseptic powers, how much to natural action marvellously quickened by the suppression of pain, Edwards does not know. Corporal Lespinasse's foot had been carried away by a projectile. Gangrene se+. in, and his life was despaired of, and dressing his wound had been intolerable for patient and operators alike until Edwards came. During the first painless dressing his eyes sought the American's in mute gratitude, while the nurse, awed by silence when she expected shrieks, had murmured softly over and over: "Ah, doctor, don't you remember how horrible this was yesterday?" The fourth day Lespinasse walked from the operating room on his own crutches. As Edwards was leaving a few minutes later, the nurse whispered: "Go out this way, monsieur; I think somebody is waiting fr you." It was Lespinasse. Seizing Edwards's hand, he kissed it passionately, then in confusion drew himself up with a stiff military salute. When Edwards visited the hospital next day the news had spread, and hot a soldier but saluted him as reverently as though he were a general. —Light in Darkness.— In the preface to "The Doctor's Dilemma," Bernard Shaw has rather more than said his say concerning modern doctors. The story of Gordon Edwards speaks more eloquently than any commentary. Yet there is little ground for resentment, and Edwards feels none. The medical profession in this war has done its best, and none shall tally its obscure acts of devotion and self-sacrifice. That it has seemed pregnated with prejudice and intolerance lies on ourselves. The doctors are merely a branch of the great tree which is ourselves, at once in our collectivity and in our essence. If they were intolerant toward a great discoverer, "an American and not a physician," it is because humanity lacks tolerance. The war resembles a fever—when it does not kill it purifies. And it reveals like a flash of lightning in dark night. It has shown beyond possibility of doubt that we who were meant to "go dancing through the earth like stars" labour under no luminous comet coma, but dully under a burden of ignorance, prejudice, and ill-will. Yet a little light can illuminate much darkness. The nobility of a great individual glorifies the race as much as the limitations of an entire nation can abase . it.