Norwich bulletin. [volume] (Norwich, Conn.) 1895-2011, 1915-05-13
Getting Ready for Casualties Of New
Offense.

Getting Ready for Casualties of New
Offense.
Franco has for several weeks been
clearing hundreds of its more accessi-
BILE hospitals of patients in order to
provide for the heavy casualties of the
new offensive movements. Sick and
wounded have been removed to cross
roads villages and to hospitals in the
country improvised from former mon
asteries and converts. Although al
ready crowded, beds are added to ev-
cry hospital in order to increase the
capacity. The plan is to have the
base hospitals and all those on the
the newly wounded. In the early
months of the war much of the loss
of life and limb was due to gangrene
resulting from slow transportation.
A report describing Frances prepa-
rations for the new rush of wounded
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. Par
fridge KIots, formerly of Baltimore.
In the Breton section of France, Miss
Polk and Mrs. Klots delivered sup
plies to 142 hospitals, of which they
personally inspected 80. These sup
plies came in large part from Ameri-
can contributors.
French provincial hospitals, Miss
Polk found, are poorly equipped as a
whole, some as primitive as one would
expect in Serbia. France failed to an
ticipate the war by storing supplies
and cataloguing possible hospitals. Her
entire energies for time were con-
centrated on the military end.
Surgical instruments, drugs and an
tiseptics fell far short of the demand.
Trained nurses were few. When thous-
ands of wounded began to arrive from
the front daily, their housing and care
had naturally to be done in rough
emergency fashion. Conditions have
a village in France without it's quota
Of conValescents.
The hospitals OF Brittany, Miss Polk
found often badly furnished and over
crowded. In the village of Quimper
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, as in many of the French
hospitals, by improvised ovens. When
patients arrived after dark, wounds
were dressed and emergency opera
lions done by candle light.
In one hospital at Brest, the beds
were merely mattresses on boards In
another, a windowless attic badly ven
llP1lcu LilIOuSu 1ISS Shy1LSuIS, COnId1ned
10 beds. There were in all 5000 beds
in Brest, but all patients who could be
moved were sent away and a thousand
beds added for the spring quota of
wounded.
The shortage in anesthetics and an
tiseptics has now been overcome, but
the lack of instruments is still serious
ly felt. Miss Polk took a descriptive
catalogue of instruments on her tour
and made notes of the needs Of vari-
Gus hospitals. This need was often
filled Immediately by the supplies dis
tributed. Pillows, blankets, hospital
clothes, sterilized cotton and bandages
from the emergency fund have been
God-sends. In many places even the
cotton had run out, and dressings of
coarse towel were used, washed and
used again. Sterilized absorbent cot
ton is a rarity in all the French hos
pitfalls, and cotton batting is ordinarily
used.
Trained nurses were few in the early
part of the war, apart from the Sis
tiers of Mercy as France has no train
ing system corresponding with the
English or American. But French
women even of the highest society
have worked with great devotion, do
ing the most mental tasks, while men
and women nurses have been hastily
trained to supplement the Sisters
Nuns banished by the church separa-
ton 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 sur
passed belief. They are as easily
handled as children. Miss Polk saw
one man who had been in eight hos
pitfalls and undergone five operations
during the past three months, yet he
seemed cheerful and contented al
though he still had some unextracted
lead in his body.