Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 266, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1916 — WHAT WAR WOUNDED ENDURE [ARTICLE]

WHAT WAR WOUNDED ENDURE

Former Austrian Army Surgeon Tells of Difficulties in Treating Men Behind Battle Lines. Philadelphia, Pa.—“ From my observations in the Austrian army, many of the doctors performed an amputation in preference to taking the trouble and at times the exasperating experience of applying a splint or a plaster of parts cast," declares E. Kilbourne Tullidge, M. D., of Philadelphia, formerly captain surgeon, Austrian army, and military surgeon, French Red Cross, in an article on “Military Surgery and the Surgeop in the Present. European War,” in American Medicine. “The bullets are in many cases of the dum-dum type,” says Doctor TullIdge, “and fired at close range, sometimes only a few yards apart, producing a most explosive effect. The limb is often so violently contused by the mass of jagged metal tearing its way through all of the tissues that large portions slough away. “When I speak of military surgery, I refer to a surgery differing from the ordinary every-day surgery in that the injured are pressed upon the surgeons in such numbers that they are not physically capable of meeting the demands placed upon them. In the field the open sesame to success is to work ■

as simply, quickly, and surely as possible, dismissing the wounded that yotf cannot keep under your care in such a condition that they may be transported farther without dangep from any possible accident. Losing sight of the great majority of his cases, the military surgeon lacks any self-criticism of his results. “To a physician first visiting the front after serving in a large base hospital is presented an entirely new phase of surgery absolutely different from any of his previous teachings or experiences. In a war such as we have today, where there has been continuous fighting for months without any armistice,' all his carefully planned and marked-out ideas of first aid are shattered, for he finds that the dead and wounded soldiers can only be removed by stretcher-bearers from the field of action at night, and that when this is 'accomplished, the motor ambulances cannot take the wounded to the field hospitals, because by showing lights they would draw fire. Many unfortunates, therefore, are forced to He outside the lines for hours, sometimes days and weeks, in the mud of manured fields until their torn clothes and wounds are so soaked in a mixture of blood and dirt that it is often impossible to get the wounds clean.

“The ‘Hilfsplatz’ is the first place the soldier reaches when carried from the field. It is usually located in some available building such as a railroad station, barn, townhall or church. Here the wounded soldier receives his first attention. The heavy cases are separated from the light ones and\are sent to the ‘verbandplatz,’ lazarets or hospitals farther behind the line and of better equipment.” Doctor Tullldge states that the first duty of the hospital corps is to prepare the wounded for transportation, so that no harm or accident can come to them en route. Not only have tissues sloughed away from the almost explosive effect of the modern rifle bullet, but fresh complications arise from broken bones. The Ideal way would be to set the bones In plaster of parts, regardless of complications. Since little plaster'of parts Is to be had upon a battlefield, splints must be improvised from any material long and firm enough to keep the-joints at rest Immediately above and below the fracture.

Telescopes, sabers, bayonets, bundles of twigs, newspapers, wrapped up as they come from the post; hammers, shovels, leggings, books, boots, even stockings filled with sand and earth, are among the extraordinary possibilities which Doctor Tullldge has seen used as splints. If no suitable splints can be obtained, as a last resort the patient is bound to a stretcher, with a sheet wrapped completely around him and the stretcher.