Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1917 — OZONE SPRAYED UPON WOUNDS [ARTICLE]

OZONE SPRAYED UPON WOUNDS

8 MPLE “OPEN-AIR" TREATMENT IS DECLARED TO HAVE BEEN \ USED WITH SUCCESS. APPLIED TO BROKEN LIMOS

Whirlpool Bath for Stiff Joints In France; Exercises to Restore Mobility. London. —A medical writer who was taken through several of the military hospitals in London by Col. A. S. Woodwark, assistant director of the Army Mvdieal Services for the London Districts, writes, in The Express concerning new and improved riaeth odt of earing for wounds: “At Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital 1 saw several patients undergoing a new healing treatment. Two of these men were most severely wounded last year and for ift months had been treated in th© customary way without any sign of healing. They were brought to .Millwall, the bandages were flung- away, th* wounds were subj tied to repeated applications of a steam of ozone, being lightly covered with a loose layer of lint in the intervals, and in four days healing was in rapid progress. "This treatment is simplicity itself. Oxygen passes from reservoir into an electrical machine which converts it into ozone,' the ozone flows out through a fine metaLtube. The machine is wheeled close to the patient's lied, the wound uncovered, and a stream of the microbe-killing ozone flows into the deepest recesses. No painful dragging off of bandages, no rebandaging of the limb to hurt and exhaust the patient. I saw here a soldier 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 be called the open-air treatment of wounds has come to stay. At the Herbert Hospital is a soldier with a bad compound fracture in many yards of bandages as was the custom, but lies between sandbags to secure immobility and is covered only with a single layer of lint. The lint is kept constantly wet with an antiseptic fluid (peroxide of hydrogen). Surrounding the leg is a large cage covered with a sheet of thin butter muslin, so that the wound is continually refreshed by a free current of air. 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 rerults in cases of stiff joints have been obtained in France. As I saw it at some of the military hospitals visited, it consists of a small oblong ytath, filled with water which is kept in continuous movement by a miniature propeller revolved at a very high speed by meaps of an electric inotor. 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 car-’ pentry are to be seen, such as the transference of a large piece of bone from the leg to fill a gap in the arm bene or jaw. , .’— “All softs of joint injuries go to Hammersmith Hospital, and there, as well as at other hospitals, it is to be seen a collection of ingenious exercisers for restoring mobility. When the surgeon has done all that he can the patient goes to the masseurs and the exercisers. If his wrist is stiff, he twists a bar with graduated resistance; if he cannot fully dose his hand? be grasps a thick bar and turns it, passing on to thinner and thinner bars as the hand improves; the patient with a stiff knee is put to exercise on a stationary bicycle; others, according to the nature and situation of the defect, practice rowing, climbing ladders, pulling on weighted ropes; and with these curative exer<ises is combined massage, with electric treatment, and other remedies. “What is being done by our greatest bacteriologists and chemists in the laboratories of the Royal Army Medical College to prevent war diseases. U. cope with the enemy gas poisons and tear ehells, etc., would tidte an article to itself to describe. Hert the vaccines are made to secure the men against typhoid fever, which used to be more fatal in war than th? bayonet and the bullet combined; paratyphoid tever, so rare fonneriy, so common now in France; the cholera ot Saleniki and Egypt; pneumonia", one of the soldier’s worst trench enemies in bold weather; ahff other diseases cOmmon in camp and trench. “About 10,009,000 doses of these vaccines have been sent out from Millwall since the war began. Among 'hem is a most valuable mixed vaccine whichgives prOtectionfrom both typhoid and the two forms of paratypbold fever."