The San Francisco call., 1898-07-31


 The. puniest man may
 stand behind cannon take his range finder, figure out the right range, touch a button and destroy a thousand lives. To great extent bat ties are fought in the dark. Shells are seen coming through the air from per haps unknown corners. They fall and death comes like bolt from the sky.
 In the civil war methods were alto | gether different. Except as obscured by the smoke of battle, the soldiers could see their foes and their weapons. There were no giant machines for hurl- ing tons of death dealing iron and steel through the air from points miles and l miles away. When the Swamp Angel came into existence we all thought 1t was a marvel, and yet 1t was nothing compared with the modern engines of war In those times, as my own expe- rience taught me, in observing the men who fought, the number of dead and wounded often depended very largely upon the personal conduct of the sol diers themselves. There was no ma chine for dealing out bullets by whole l sale, and therefore the effect was reg ulated infinitely more by circumstances than it Is to-day.
 The soldier who goes into battle in our present war with Spain must face storm of bullets which are just as apt to come from a half dozen machine | guns as from a regiment of Soldiers.i l These bullets fly at so many different angles that 1t is almost like fire at times, with the result that the sol dlers are unable to protect themselves as they were in the old days when there was bullet for every gun and no more. In spite of all this, however, I am inclined to think that our modern methods are the more merciful, for the chances Of man being hit by a bullet and living are entirely altered from what they were in the cid days
 IT a bullet strikes soldier in the head or some vital part death is almost cer- tain to be practically instantaneous A man may survive for few moments, but he Is never likely to regain con. sciousness. If the bullet does not strike vital part then the hospital methods or to-day, and l am speaking of the field hospitals, are such that unless there is such shattering of tissue and bone as to preclude the possibility of recovery the man Is almost certain to regain his health I well remember while l was with the army and in the hospitals during the civil war that to amputate a mans limb sometimes meant that death would follow not from the mere amputation, but because of that frightful thing known as hos pital gangrene, which so often made reamputations necessary.
 | Now to-day there Is no such thing as hospital gangrtne. At least if there Is 1t is so rare as to be unknown to the majority of practitioners in hospitals Aseptio surgery has reached that stage where gangrene is almost an impossf- bility. The result of this will be, in the field hospitals, that when a man Is torn by splinter, shell or bullet, he will be so treated that there is nothing to con- tend with except the direct physical in jury caused by the object that inflicted the wound Of course, now as then the proba bilities of mans surviving the shock of a wound are lessened or in- creased by his physical state at the time he received the wound. Taking all things into consideration I have no hesitation in saying that the chances of the United States soldier of escaping with his life from the dangers of the battle field are 75 per cent greater than they were when last he fought an enemy of his own color.
 The character of the wounds inflicted and the immediate effect of the bullet or pieces of shell that inf1ict them are very different from what they used to be. We know more about the direct effect of the bullet than the shell. We have experimented with medical sub iects in this regard and have learned that the force and velocity of the mod ern bullet is so great that when it passes through the head of a person it almost annihilates the brain. The old l style bullet might pass through any thing and leave merely clear trail behind 1t and therefore its effect was | small in comparison with the present shell. I am now referring to the bullet that is authorized by the Geneva con vention. which forbade the use by any nation of the explosive bullet that in flicts such fearful injuries.
 Then again man who receives bull let wound in the body suffers from a much more serious injury than he l would have in other days. More tissue is destroyed and the bone, if hit, Is IspIintered more These things would make the ordinary wound in part which is not vital an exceedingly se- rious matter, if it were not for asep- tic surgery I do not say that the l x.yn,,pdc Q ,a pof Sarfoua a a fhav arc h11f