Notes from Balmer Lawn, Brockenhurst

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XI, Issue 2, 1 April 1918, Page 82

Notes from Balmer Lawn, Brockenhurst

Bipp Treatment

We are very busy here, and have been for some time now. This last engagement (Messines) seems to have been a ghastly affair as far as our men are concerned. One scarcely dare allow themselves to think of the many sad homes it will have made. The men are simply splendid. One never hears them growl. The way they stand their dressings too, is simply magnificent. But the present-day methods of treating wounds have simplified things so much that patients are not living m constant apprehension of being daily tortured by having their dressings done. We have had the most splendid results here from the treatment of wounds by Bipps (Bismuth Todoform), and wounds are cleaned up under a general anaesthetic if very extensive, a local if not too big ; then not dressed again for a week or ten days. I really don't know how the sisters would have got all their work done if we had been

using the old pre-war method of foments A Eusol pad is occasionally applied, but the old boracic foment is a thing of the past. At least it is never used here. It seems to me that * Bipp ' is one of the most wonderful war-time treatments. Here Major Home has been using it now for a year, but more than ever since Messines, and has had really wonderful results. Would you have thought a dirty abscess cavity could be sewn up on the table after having been cleaned out ? But it is so. It has been done here over and over again. The whole area cleaned out and mopped dry with ether, and then Bipp thoroughly rubbed into every part of the wound, then sewn up on the table. Tf any one had told me a dirty pus wound could be left for days (after having been cleaned up) without needing to be dressed, I should have thought it was a tall romance.