Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1916-09-22

London.-The marvellous progress
that has been made in recent times IN
surgicf science is most impressively
reveale bv a journey to some of the
larger military hospitals. made posi-
BILE through the courtesy of Sir Alfred
Keogh, director general of the army
medical service.
In all the hospitals what the medical
staff SET above all is conservative sur
gery-that is to say, the saving OF
limbs in order that the patients may
remain useful members of the COM
munity. Thus, at the Herbert hospital,
at Shooters Hill, there have been
since the beginning of the war from
three to four thousand operations. and
Colonel Simpson, the officer in charge,
declared that he did not believe there
had been in all more than % primary
arnputations.
The impression left by a tour of
these hospitals upon the layman's mind
is that outsiders have an utterly in
adequate idea of the debt they owe
to modern surgery at time like the
present. Day by day the surgeons
are giving to the nation new men for
old. They have embarked upon
great mission Of hope among the ma
TONS soldiers. They are doing more
than would have been credible twenty
years ago to rob war of its ultimate
horror,
n,,A - @I>1 h,1r do Nf nf.f11
cases brought to 'ene's notice during
these visits it is only possible to de-
scribe few that may be regarded as
typical of this trade of mending sol
diers. Take first the new nerve sur
gerry. Here is man with a bullet
hole near his collar bone which sew
cred the nerve controlling the muscles
of the wrist. The result was wrist
Drop and hand which until quite re-
Gently would have been regarded as.
incurably useless. The two ends of
the severed nerve have been freed
from what had already become no
more than a scar they have been re-
united and there is every prospect that
in less than a year the hand will be
almost as good as ever.
"As simple as tying up the two ends
of a cut telephone WIRE" says>the sur
geon who operated.
Amazing Nerve Cases.
There are more remarkable nerve
eases STILL A man had part of the
fleshy portion of his arm shot away,
carrying with it four inches Of the
nerve necessary to control the hand
movements. The surgeon rang up sew
eral hospitals on the telephone till he
heard of what he wanted, the ampu-
tation that afternoon of healthy limb.
The limb happened to be a Leg and
it was amputated in the afternoon. No
sooner was it cut off than four or five
inches Of practically living nerve were
removed from the calf, placed in a
saline bath and rushed by taxi to the
other hospital. Here the patient was
already under an anesthetic. The
wound in his arm was opened with
lancet, the ends Of the Indispensable
nerve quickly found and the circuit
re-established, as it were, by means of
the first patients four inches of fila
ment. Today the man is in fair way
of regaining the full use of his hand.
Bone surgery on rather similar lines
is more familiar, but hardly less sur
prising when you meet and talk to a
man who converses with the aid of a
lower jaw part of which was only a
few weeks ago part of his right leg.
1t was mended with two and one-half
inches of one of his shin bones. The
shin has quite healed, and the hole
will be completely filed with new bone
before long, so accommodating is ma
ture when treated with knowledge.
Another patient is perfectly happy
and prosperous with three inches of
the fibula of his left leg neatly NOR
tised in the humerus of his right arm.
He, too, will finally suffer no loss Of
bone whatever. The variants of such
operations are endless and only limited