Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 247, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1916 — USE NO BANDAGES IN NEW SURGERY [ARTICLE]

USE NO BANDAGES IN NEW SURGERY

Latest Method of Healing Obstinate Wounds Proves Great Success. ARE SPRAYED WITH OZONE Stream of Gaseous Substance Flows Into Deepest Recesses, Killing Ail Microbes —Horrors of Dressing Wounds Eliminated. London— Bandages are eliminated in the latest methods of healing obstinate wounds here. This is one of the marvelous developments of surgery to which the war has given impetus. One of the horrors of hospitals is dressing wounds. Strong, brave men scream involuntarily with pain every day when the bandages are removed and the wounds treated. At Queen Alexandra’s military hospital today several patients were exhibited undergoing the new treatment. Two of these men were most severely wounded in September of last year, and for ten months had been treated in the customary vay without any sign of healing. On August 2Jhey wefe were flung away, the wounds were subjected to repeated applications of a stream of ozone, being lightly covered with a loose layer of lint in the Intervals, aDd in four days healing was in rapid progress. This treatment is simplicity itself. Oxygen passes -from a reservoir into an electrical machine which converts it into ozone; the ozone flows out through a fine metal tube. The machine is wheeled close to the patient’s bed, the wound uncovered, and a stream of the microbe-killing ozone Hows into the deepest recesses. No painful dragging off of bandages, no rebandaging of the limb to hurt and exhaust the -patient— New Treatment a Success. Here was seen a isoldier who had lost his right foot, with a stump covered with skin so healthy and hard that he could walk upon it, a surgical marveL What might he called the open-air treatment of wounds has come to stay. At the Herbert hospital is a soldier with a bad compound fracture of the leg. The limb is not swathed in many, yards of bandages as was the custom, hut lies between sandbags to secure immobility and is covered only with a single layer of lint. The lint is kept constantly wet with peroxide of hydrogen. Surrounding the leg is u large cage covered with a sheet of thin butter muslin, so that the wound is conair. Extremely rapid healing'- and freedom from the agony of manipulation are the great gains from this mode of treatment. The whirlpool bath is entirely a war Invention, from which excellent results in cases of stiff joints have been obtained in France. It consists of a small oblong bath, filled with water which is kept in continuous movement by a miniature propeller revolved at a very high speed! by medns of an electric motor. A stiff arm or leg, hand or foot, placed in the bath and kept there for some time is much improved by the stimulus of the running water. Marvelous examples of bone carpentry are to be seen, such as the transference of a large fciece of bone from the leg to fill a gap in the arm bone or Jaw. Trench foot is being more or less successfully treated by massage, operation, and other methods. After the Surgeon the Masseur. All sorts of joint Injuries go to Hammersmith hospital, and there, as well as at other hospitals, is to be seen s collection of ingenious exercises for restoring mobility. When the surgeon has done all that he can th& patient goes to the masseurs and the exercisers. If his wrist is stiff he twists a bar with graduated resistance; if he cannot fully close his hand he grasps a thick bar and turns it, passing on to thinner and' thinner bars as the hand

Improves; the pnrTent with a stiff knee is put to exercise on r. stationary bicycle; others, according to the nature and situation of the defect, practice roping, climbing ladders, pulling on weighted ropes; and with these curative exercises is combined massage, with electrie treatment, and other remedies. J - In the laboratories of the Royal Army medical college vaccines are made to secure the men against typhoid fever, which. used to be more fatal in war than the bayonet and the bullet combined; paratyphoid fever, so rare formerly, so common now in France; the cholera of Saloniki and Egypt; and pneumonia, one of the sol-

dier’s worst treneh enemies in cold weather. About ten million doses of these vaccines have been sent out from Milwall since the war began. Among them is a most valuable mixed vaecirife which gives protection from both typhoid and the two forms of paratyphoid fever. —This ha» been in use since January last. Quite new, since the war began, are the measures taken for discovering _ whether anyone who comes in contact with soldiers is carrying the infection of spotted fever at the back of his nose, for, although himself quite free from the disease, such a carrier' might create an epidemic in a camp.