THE FATALLY WOUNDED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11504, 28 September 1915, Page 5

THE FATALLY WOUNDED.

NATURE'S KINDLY PROVISION. SUFFER VERY LITTLE. An eminent military surgeon recently stated that much pity for the victims of severe wounds on the battlefield is in reality wasted tho result of overwrought imaginations. His experience in the present war has brought strongly before him that wonderful provision of nature known to tho profession as euthanasia, or painless death. It has proved to bim that, in general, people know as little of their going as of their coming into the world. The fear of wounds and death the surgeon attributes to the natural conclusion that a wound twenty times as big as the cut« and scratches to which all are accustomed must hurt twenty times as much. Thus, to the onlooker physical agony and pain are dreadful in the light of his own imagination. Tho fallacy of this reasoning is daily being proved on the battlefield < of Europe. Victims of the most serious wounds are daily passing through severe surgical operations without the help of brain-enelouding drugs. Theso cases witness that at a certain stage pain become.?, too intense to bear, the nerves become paralysed in transmitting their messages to the brain. The convulsions of the body and the shrieks of agony are, indeed, not evidences of conscious pain. This surgeon says that in many cases ho has observed young doctors, when about to operate on badly mangled soldiers, are more seriously affected and mentally tortured than tho victim of the wound himself. With the most violent wounds, the only conscious sensations are usually a sort of cold numbness, preparatory to a fever, and the quieting descent of euthanasia. It is the smaller wounds, not serious enough to bring about this twilight state upon the nerves, which inflict most conscious pain. In a very small percentage of cases euthanasia takes on another phase which, though temporarily of benefit to tho patient, is a warning of danger to the surgeon. In those rare cases the patient seems to become unduly exhilarated. His eyeballs expand find ho laughs and talks and sings as if inebriated. In such cases tho danger of surgical shock following the operation is very grave and often fatal. In the light of modern surgery there is much to reassure faith in the farreaching provisions of nature to protect, all life from undergoing torture as great as people may at times imagine, possible. "We m'»'■.* t.oiv believe that death comes only u'.th the same (Meeting hand that is laid upon u.i a*; we sleep " ; that the summons u to join tb" innumerable. caravan " is never a clarion call of tremendous conscious agony, but is rather a quiet drifting, a gentle touch without sound or hurt, like a door that, is softly closed.