Bisbee daily review., 1915-05-19
FRANCE PREPARES NEW HOSPITALS FOR
 FRESH OFFENSIVE
Capacity of All Old Hospitals h. creased in Order to Provide for Casualties Expected in New Movement.

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 LONDON. May 18.-France has for
 several weeks been clearing hundreds
 or its more accessible hospitals of pa. tients in order Co provide for the hea-
 wy casualties of the new offensive movements Sick and wounded have been removed to crossroads villages and to hospitals in the country im- provised from former monasteries and convents. Although already crowded
 beds are added to every hospital in order 10 increase the capacity. The plan is Co have the base hospital and all those on the same hallway lines ready to care for the newly wounded
 In the early months of the war much Of the loss of life and limb was due Co gangrene resulting from slow transportation
 A report describing Frances prep aratons for the new rush of wounded and the difficult problems with which her hospitals are already confronted has been laid before the French Wounded Emergency Fund by Miss Daisy Polk of San Francisco. who re- gently toured Brittany with Mrs. Part ridge Klots, formerly of Baltimore In the Breton section of France Miss Polk and Mrs. Riots delivered sup plies Co 142 hospitals. of which they personally inspected 92. There sup plies came in large part from Ameri- can contributors.
 French provincial hospitals, Miss Polk found. are poorly equipped as whole, some as primitive as one would expect in Cerbia. France failed to anticipate the war by storing supplies and cataloguing possible hospitals. Her entire energies for a time were concentrated on the military end Surgical instruments, drugs and anti septics fell far short of the demand. Trained nurses were few. When thou sands Of wounded began to arrive from the front daily their housing and care had naturally to be done in rough ! emergency fashion. Conditions have now greatly improved. yet there is not a village in France without its quota of convalescents.
 The hospitals of Brittany, Miss Polk | found often badly furnished and oyer | etowded. In the village of Quimper l she visited a hospital without either | gas or running water, without chairs ! and without the necessary operating equipment The operating table was | of plain wood and the sterilizing had to be done in many of the French hos pitals, by improyised ovens. When patients arrived after dark, wounds 1 were dressed and emergency opera lions done by candle light
 In one hospital in Brest. the beds were merely mattresses on boards l In another, a windowless attic badly ventilated through its skyughts. con- tained 75 beds There were in all 1 5000 beds in Brest. but all patients l who could be moved were sent away and a thousand beds added for the l spring quota of wounded
 The shortage in auesthetcs and an- | tiseptics has now been overcome. but 1 the lack of instruments is stiu seri- | ously felt Miss Polk took a descrip- | tive catalogue of instruments on her | tour and made notes of the needs of ! the various hospitals This need was | often filled immediately by the sup plies distributed Pillows, blankets, | hospital clothes sterilized cotton and | bandages from tine emergency fund | have been God-sends. In many plac- | es even the cotton had run out, and | dressings of coarse towel were used. | washed and used again. Sterilized | absorbent cotton is a rarity in all the French hospitals, and cotton batting | is ordinarily used.
 Trained nurses were few in the ear ly part of the war, apart from the Sisters of Mercy, as France has no training system corresponding with | the English or American. But French women. even of the highest society. have worked with great devotion, do- ing the most menial tasks, while men and women nurses have been hastily | trained to supplement the Sisters, Nuns banished by the church separ ation act, have also been called back from exile The nurses at the village of Broons were recalled from the Is- land of Jersey
 Miss Polk says the cheerfulness and patience of the French wounded surpassed belief They are as easily handled as children. ]