Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 44 Years.] MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1919. WAR SURGERY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 45, Issue 13752, 3 February 1919, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 44 Years.] MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1919. WAR SURGERY.

The story of surgery is one of the most interesting of romances, and war surgery must have been its most important portion when men lived the life of Ishmael, their hand against every man's, and every man's hand against them. We cannot, however, spare time to look back into the misty morn of dawning science, but must push on at once to that day which saw the birth of modern surgical practice, and that, we suppose, we may take to be what we yen-> ture to call the Iristerian epoch. It dates back no further than to about the middle of the last century, and takes its name from the introduction of its aseptic methods. Of course, these had as their basis the belief in what was then a new science of bacteriology. In plain language, Lord Lister taught that, under the old system of surgery, harmful germs got into the wounds, set up dangerous action, and so caused delay in healings, or things still worse which might—and did in a large proportion of cases—end in death. How Lister experimented with that dangerous acid known as carbolic is a story in itself, but his success was proof positive that he was on the right lines. Of course, his methods are now superseded by improvements, and the measures taken to secure perfect cleanliness in instruments, in the operator's own hands, and in dressings, have long since passed the point which he considered sufficient, but his great principle remains unshaken, and is to-day the sheet anchor of surgical practice the world over. Many things have come in to modify, super-

sede, or add to what was known 50 years ago. The X rays, for example, have removed the erstwhile great difficulty there was in locating the exact position of some foreign substance within the body, and the use of radium had not even suggested itself to earlier practitinoers. But Lister's example has told, and is telling, upon myriads of surgeons everywhere, with the result that when new popular works come to tell us of the war surgery of the past four years, the world will be amazed. For those works we wait with ill-con-cealed impateince. We have been led to believe that jio war —not even that of 1904-5 on the Japanese side, when wonders in surgery were done, can compare with this in it's success from the doctor's point of view. Statistics assure us that the number o± avoidable deaths has been negligible, that the most extraordinary operations have been successfully performed, and the apparently most hopeless cases cured. Nor is the success ended when a man has been passed by the surgeon. It may then be necessary for the artificial limb maker to do his part, and ii-. this there seems to be little less to wonder at than in the performance of the surgeon himself. It is impossible to conceive of a more helpless being, or one deserving of more commiseration, than he who has been shattered in a modern figkt. That ; surgeons should be heroes and nurses angels under such circumstances is underI standiible enough. That they should become extremely matter-of-fact and practical is just as sure, but that they should —providing they are of the siglit sort — ever degenerate into such fiends as our poor fellows found in Germany is, happily, impossible in our more favoured land. Nothing, we think, will leave a

deeper stain on the German name than their sinking of hospital ships, and their treatment of Allied wounded. Shame is far too mild a term for it.

it is yearly over,