WAR SURGERY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4893, 21 September 1901, Page 4

WAR SURGERY.

At the last meeting of the British Medical Association, Sir William MacCormac, who was at the bead of the British Medical Service during the early part of the war in South Africa, read a most interesting paper on ' War Surgery,' in which he made an instructive comparison between tbe new methods and the old. He reminded his audience that chloroform was not used on a large scale in the field until the Crimean war, and that antiseptic surgery was scarcely known at the time of tbe great struggle between France and Germany 15 years later. Tbe mortality after operations, even 30 years ago, was very terrible. Abdominal wounds were almost always fatal, and there were an enormous number of deaths from hemorrhage. The large bullets then in use inflicted most extensive damage, both on the soft parts and on the bones, and the unhappy sufferers obtain comparatively little relief from the surgery of the day. In South Africa, on the other hand, the use of chloroform and morphia was universal, and the small, swift Lee-Metford or Mauser bullet often passed through a man without causing any serious complications. Tbe manner in which the missile traversed the abdomen, tborax, cranium, the great joints, and important viscera, producing only a minimum of constitutional disturbance, was a marvel to all tb.9 authorities. Formerly a gunshot fracture of the femur formed a serious menace to life. In the American Civil War three thousand cases of this sort were treated by amputation, and the mortality following the injury amounted to 50 per cent: In South Africa there were very few cases of ampu tation, and the recovery was looked upon as the ordinary result. Sir William MacCormac pointed out that, in addition to these great changes in the conditions of warfare, the actual casualties had largely decreased. In one engagement during the Franco-German war the French loßt 3,000 killed and 14,000 wounded while the total British loss during the South African war hardly exceeded those figures. Modern science has not only made war less disagreeable, but has also rendered it less deadly.