Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 132, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1918 — Newest Devices of Surgery For Our Wounded Soldiers [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Newest Devices of Surgery For Our Wounded Soldiers

Nitrous Oxide and Fluoroscope at Hand to Give American Wounded All Chance in World.

The best is none too good for the wounded American soldier. That is the Red Cross idea. The minute science finds an Improvement in surgery it is adopted in the Red Cross army hospitals, which are models of up-to-the-lnstant completeness. This'fact Js vividly emphasised In a recent news dispatch from Reginald Wright Kauffman, author of “The House of Bondage.’’ Kauffman had been allowed u accompany a badly wounded friend Into the operating room: - ‘Come on,’ said the Interne; ‘your friend's in there. He’s about played •ut; can’t stand chloroform or ether. Got to give him nitrous oxide.’ “I knew that tor a patient whose registance has been diminished the difference between the old anaesthetics and this new one is frequently the difference between life and death, but 1 elan knew that nitrous oxide Is not •a our army list and that no supplies existed a year ago in France. “ The Red Cross has put up a plant here,’ explained the interne. He opened a door. Bill, lay on the operating

table, and the surgeons were at work. “ They’re after . that abdominal around,’ the interne told me. They’re working with the fluoroscope.’ “Above Bill’s upturned feet and about a yard away stood an X ray apparatus. Its flesh piercing light fell on a disk of metal that an orderly'held over Bill’s bared waist. The violet rays passed through the disk and Into the patient’s abdominal cavity. The surgeon’s eyes followed them through the metal and into the flesh. His knife plying fingers worked under the disk and deep In the wounded man’s belly. He cut with that solid plate for a window. “ ‘He Can see what, he’s after before he gets started,’ my guide exulted, ‘and If he overlooks any shell fragments there Is a magnetic contrivance that sounds a basset when he gets near them.’ “It would be all right, they told me. Thanks to the fluoroscope ahd the nitrous oxide, a’ stay here under treatment and then a rest at one of the Red Cross convalescents’ camps by the seaside would ftt BUI for a return to the trenchea," >