Wounds and Infection.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 33, 1 May 1917, Page 2

Wounds and Infection.

The professional healer, like the professional fighter, has found that many of the things he learnt in South Africa he has had to unlearn in Flanders. Wounds seldom proved troublesome in the Boer War, because the South African veldt was almost virgin ; but in Belgium and France, where the land has been cultivated for centuries, the gentle germ is always ready to enter the smallest wound and bring about tetanus and other diseases.

At first the surgeons were in despair, fearing that our much-vaunted antiseptics were of no avail. It required long search and experiment before methods of overcoming new difficulties could be discovered. Then, owing to the lavish use of high explosive shells, wounds are more complicated and more difficult to keep clean, while the pointed bullet works more harm than the blunt one of the “good old days.”

Plenty of fresh air is found to work marvels, so there is at least one hospital in which the patients live practically in the open. It has also been found that wounds remain clean If water continually flows over them, so the clever surgeon has constructed little baths which fit over the wound, a supply of warm water impregnated with oxygen continually flowing through.