Hammond Times, Volume 6, Number 43, Hammond, Lake County, 3 November 1917 — Page 3

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i tea -uross uoctors ana lvurses First to Lyarrynuwrican Fla

j'"- HE boy who goes

to w,ir

today laces torpedoes, bombs, liquid fire, deadly gases, quickfirers and siege cutis. Never

before have the means of dealing death been so numerous or so ingenious, or so terrible.

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back home, safe and sound, than lie would have had in any pi eat war that has been fought. Base hospitals, as they have been evolved in the present war, together with superior methods of snr.ee ry, are responsible for that. Rocer Eabson. the statistician, is quoted as saying- that fourteen cut of

litteen men have heen s.nfe 1

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snrgeon relieving the other when the outside their tents, where they wer latter from simple exhaustion could found tangled up in the tent ropes. Ai work no longer, and the very next day, American nure. although struck in th just as if nothing had happered, these face by a fragment of steel from th same surgeons were called upon to re-; bomb, refused to be relieved and re reive and care for 200 wounded s?nt i mained at her task courageously to th

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the Great War-and the losses at first MifiX f r ( V SVT were vastly greater than the losses now. 0 j 'XK He continues: UpS&? ( r ' -i-i -V 'Under present condition,, where man fO , j j, rower rs bein saved, not more than one ' " U -' A ' ZjZ S 'I ( in thirty is killed. Only one man in 500 dt? L5i f f"- T , ? V

loses a limb, a char.ee no greater than 1 ' ' "AO -V "1 " L

in hazardous conditions at hotn

M. Andre Tardieu. French High Com-

missioner to the United States, has r ptven out figures showing that the per- v'j rentage of casualties in proportion to &j?s

the mobilized strength of France has

fallen from 2.39 tor the first six months ' , of 1915 to 1.2S ii the last six months -"?-( of 1016. p" How does it happen that soldiers today are safer than ever before?

Learning How to Care for the Wounded The answer, a:s suggested above, is that the nations have learned how to take care of their soldiers. Camp sanitation, scientific rationing, business orpar.izaticri of the supply service these things count, but the big vital factor in s a in.qr husbands and sons for the

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If there are no permanent huildings these Base Hospital Units which th Red Cross has turned over to th Armv Medical Corps get right to wet under canvas.

women who w c:t at home is the t:::ciency of the medical service. The second answer, also, is the Red Cross. As Lord Wantaee. father of the

nid :

Ilritish Red Cross movement, '"However well organized an

Artm

' As a result of these activities of Colonel Kean's department, the Red Cross had available at the time of the declaration of war thirty fully organized base hospital units. Each was practically fully manned with a staff of

Med'-al Service may be, it never has i twenty-four surgeons and doctors and been, and never will be, able to cope i sixty-five nurses. The non-professional s !equate!v with the suddeti emergencies ' personnel of more than one hundred

.'oluntary ana mty enr.srra men was not gotten

c i war on a large scale, and voluntary a

organizations, unimpeded by official re- together until after the beginning of the strictions, are alone capable of giving , war. Each had bed equipment, surgical auxiliary relief and of providing extra apparatus, linen supplies, etc., sufficient comforts and luxuries with the -."quisite to care for five hundred patients, promptitude and rapidity." i Within a fortnight alter the declaraTkat is whv, when America entered i tion of war on Gtrmany, six of these the war, the first organized forces of Red Cross units were ordered into active the United States to go abroad were ' service. The first unit to sail was Base Red Cross base hospital units winch l,ad ; Hospital Xo. 4, from Cleveland. Two I crn mustered into the United States : days later, on May 11th, the Harvard Army Medical Corps. That is why I Ur.it, Xo. 5, was eft, with Dr. Harvey richt r.ow you would find American : Cunning, Professor of Surgery in the doctors and nurses deneratelv hard Harvard Medical School, as its head, at work behind the lines in France, j Then went four others, one from Cotrving to keep Dritish and French Hmbia and the Presbyterian Hospital in

solliers from slipping out of the ew York, with Dr. George E. Brewer: "Wounded" into the "Death" lists. He- 'm charge ; one from the Pennsylvania;

in from the trenches of the British Expeditionary Force. "At the time the German aviator flew over it moct of the surgical staff was engaged in making rounds of the wards. "The first bombs were directly in front of Lieut. Fitzsimons' tent. He probably never knew what happened to him. The next two fell a hundred feet beyond,

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A hospital orderly who worke

untiringly was found later to have bee struck in the head by a fragment an painfully injured. He had just tied u his head and worked on. , "In the operating room, Captair florace Binney and Eliott, with the: assistants, worked all night long. Se eral delicate operations were perform

in a live marquee ward in which there j and their work was made all the hard were many patients, and the last struck j by the fact that in innumerable cast the reception tent. I t':e patients were in serious danger "Overhead there was no sound. The I infection from the pieces of wood at

far greater, as one of the bombs fell ! German aviator fiew too high to be nails and dirt which had been throinto the center of the large reception heard, but he left his identity behind ! into their bodies." tent to which the wounded are first him, not only in the bombs he dropped, J borne for examination. ; but in the derisive handful of pfennings ! When the Wounded Come "Ten seconds sufficed for the drop- he scattered upon the hospital. j Here is the picture of the arrival ping of the first bombs from the flying : "Although the exploding bombs ere- ( a trainload of wounded at one of tl plane, and within less than a minute ated horror in the hospital, there was ; American hospitals, as it was describe afterward the surgeons of the hospital not the smallest sign of panic, and the ' by one of the doctors:

were at the task of collecting and at- ' work of discovering the wounded and j "A reasonable time before the arrivt

tending those who had been struck col'"ting them was immediately begun, j of a convoy we are informed," 1 down. And for twenty-four hours they j This was made cruelly difficult by the ; writes. "Just before it comes in we a' were at work in the operating room, one ' darkness, but every one sprang to it ! called from our billets by the expressio;

r:r-se 01 i :-t as 5' form th tovs.

lie Red Cross they are ready, n ns they are needed, to persame service for American

How the Red Cross Prepared

Hospital at Philadelphia, directed by Dr. Richard F. Ifarte; another representing Washington University, at St. Louis, with Dr. Frederick T. Murphy ; and still another from Chicago, headed by Dr. Frederick Besley. More than twelve

haps it is quartered in tents on the sand-dunes along the Belgian coast; perhaps it lias been temporarily installed in some French hospital to undergo a

j period of training before going up near

the actual front. As soon as the wounded have received attention from the regimental

Two years before America entered t.'.e ; have now been sent to the front, and, war. and thus suddenly had need of all: pending the taking over cf trendies by the medical service at her command, the the American troops, are serving with Red Cross 5 rgan the organization of its the British, and French armies.

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and ambulance company

Under the direction ot Colonel Jefferson R. Kean, who had bf.-cn detailed to the Red Cros, from the Medical Corps t the Armv, the Military Rtlief Department set out to en!ict the aid cf

The remainder of these forty-seven hospital units are equally prepared and ready for the call to service, whether abroad or at hone, on a moment's notice.

the Red Cross chapters throughout the country in providing trained personnels cf doctors and muses available for inst'mt duty in time of war or national disaster. Altogether a total of forty-seven base hospitals were organized, financed, and largely equipped. The national treasury

of the Red Cross was scarcely drawn cjarerj.

upon at all in this work. Aot only did the chapters recruit the staffs for each of these units from their city hospitals, hut in several cases they undertook to purchase the necessary equipment and to make the required amount of hospital supplies in the chapter workrooms. In Xew York six hospitals were organized, in Chicago four, and in Philadelphia, four. The Xew York County chapter, not content with the minimum requirements laid down by the Department of Military Relief and the medical

King George Expresses England's Gratitude So quick was the response that King George of England, on the arrival of the first units in London, felt called' upon to express Britain's gratitude. To the members of the Presbyterian Hospital unit of Xew York, on their'

reception at Buckingham Palace, he de-

autnonties ot

"We greet you as the first detachment of the American Army which has landed on our shores since your great Republic resolved to join in the world .-truggle for the ideals of civilization. We deeply appreciate this prompt and generous rej spouse to our needs. "It is characteristic of the humanity arid chivalry which have ever been evinced by the American nation that the first assistance rendered to the Allies is in connection with the profession of healing and the work of mercy." Such were the returns the Red Cross

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surgeon and have gone through a cas- -s ifejv i V-"-"-f ? -VV - V .''V - V - ' tCVV' rr .- ";- -f '-j n4:!J.:&:.-,o$r,l ;W.- -

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1 v 'errtniiriirA Fibn Sert irc. Inc. These poilus are getting well fast at the American Red Cross Hospital in Pans, where Dr. Joseph A. Blake is in charge.

Army, vent ahead

on experiments to develop improvements

in equipment. With some of the most was able to draw on the $2,000,000 inprominent surgeons and doctors in the surance as these funds really were United States enlisted on the staffs, the invested in the equipment of base hos-

chapter organized a committee on research and st.m'Kirdizrtion. The work of this conmrticc has now resulted in the development of a new type of movable food kitchen to So attached as a trailer to ambulances or field column". It lias made siruilar experiments in the field kitchen attached to bue hospitals.

.e initiative.

Other cities show the

All over the country the greatest interest was shown' in the organization of th?e great reserve relief agencies.

ualty clearing station, where the opera- The doctors and nurses have labored! fiotis that cannot be postponed are per- ' under tremendous pressure. The size : formed, they-go to a base hospital. At of many of the units has been increased. : the base hospital only those cases are ' Some now have a thousand beds in- , kept which can be promptly handled in '; stead of the 500 originally provided for, three weeks or less. Men whose in- 1 and six of the units have bad reinforce- ; juries will keep them in a hospital ' mcnts in all classes of their personnel. longer than that go back st:'l further to' j the general hospitals or to England. ' A Hospital Under Fire , In the hospital you will find nurses j These men and women are of splen- ! picked from the cream of the profes- 1 did stuff. If any proof of this had been j sion in the United States, thoroughly needed, it would have been sunnlied hv 1

pitals. much of it before the war began, i trained, strong and devoted enough to their behavior under fire when the1 It was insurance that paid for itself not ' suv,T,ort the doctors in their long, long'! Harvard unit wns bombarded hv ai

davs of fatiguing service.' j German tlrm-.i on the night of Sep-' You will find college boys and other tcmhe- 4th. Lieut. William T. Fitz- ' boys, accustomed to comfort, trained simoi.s, of the Medical Officers' Reserve . for all sorts of highly skilled work. Corps, and three army privates were , serving as members of the enlisted staff : killed, and thirty-two persons were '

clerks, assistants, technicians, order- j wounded. This cable tells the story : i

What a lase Hospital IJoes h'es, busy at the hard, dirty work of ai "The attack occurred at 11 o'clock at Lock for a moment at one of these war hospital, harder and more distaste-; night. Just at that time fortunately no great Red Cross agencies of mercy as nil than any one who has not been ; convoy of wounded was being received.

:J is now in operation in France. Per- , there can imagine. i or the li-t of casualties would have been i

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iv m ttie promptness ivr.ti wmcn

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ser ice. but in the savkur of lives and

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enected

through being

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The first "detachments of the American Army to reach Europe for service were Base Hospital Units of the Army Medical Corps, organized by the Red Cross. The King cf England welcomed the first unit at Buckingham Palace on May 23rd. The Queen is at the King's right. Ambassador Page standinc iust behind.

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Nurses like these, from the finest hospitals of the country, are at work in France and ready to care for American soldiers. with a will. Many, of the injured had 'Train is now pulling in.' We dress as been blown from their cots, some o en . soon as possible. Simultaneously we I hear 'assembly being blotvn for the men.

j They all go on duty -every one of them, j Most of the convoys arrive in the dark j "A certain number of men are assigned to the tram. Wounded are taken j off promptly. The hospital trains are j wonders. The wounded are handled I here with great care and comfort, and ! sleep for the most part of the journey j from the casualty clearing stations to us. The trains have operating rooms ; and are equipped in first-class srjle. j "After being mken oil the train the j wounded are assigned to ambulances ! detailed for certain wards, depending on ' diagnosis of case and capacity of the i wards. j "After the ambulances have delivered j the cases to the hospital buildings our

men carry out the patients to the respective wards. The whole thing works like a breeze. A convoy of 500 patients can be taken from the trains by ambulances to the hospital and be fixed comfortably in bed in a few hours " So the picture might have gone on. Surgical dressings use.; in the wards, all made by the loving luuids of devoted women back in the States the sheets, pillow-cases, th- bed clothing (tach jacket has its tiny Red Cro's sewed near th-: collar) all stand for the Red Cross and the part the Red Cross hai to play in war to relieve the pain and suffering that are its inevitable results.