Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1919 — Great War Has Taught Us How to Save More Lives Than It Has Cost [ARTICLE]

Great War Has Taught Us How to Save More Lives Than It Has Cost

By MAJOR G. A. STEWART,

Rockefeller Institute

The war has taught us how to save more lives than the war has cost. The countless improvements of practice, both in medicine and surgery, made in this war have advanced our science half a century in four years. In. the value and technique of “chlorination” —or the use of some combination of chlorine for the destruction of malignant germs ' vh gm- r:.<‘ Lj - been Ivarne4 :is ne\<r longer ahy good excuse for persistence of pus. 8 t The desekqmient of the ’•Carrel-Dakin - ’ method of treatmg all manner of infected wounds by periodic irrigation with Dakin fluid (a nonI caustic hypochlorite) marked' an extraordinary . = Aud Jhthis ! the method is as important as the fluid. ' It is being taught to surgeons, I the world over. , • : - Out of 45. patients in the War ..Demonstration hospital suffering from empvema we returned 35 to front. Empyema is pus’in the chest cavity It often follows pneumonia, and hitherto has been highly fatal. There has been an unusual amount of empyema in New York this year of a very serious type. Hut the death rate has been, lessened by the modern treatment. 1 Other wonderful' advances have been made; for example, in X-ray tfork; in knowledge of the gas bacillus which causes a form of gangrene, in "the -scran} treatment for prevention or cure of such diseases as typhoid fever, lockjaw, pneumonia, meningitis,'etc. ' The«i lessons will save far more 5 lives in the long run than the war has coat. € . d ; _