Bisbee daily review., 1917-09-02
CANADIAN SURGEON
 WRITES STORY ABOUT
 WESTERN WAR FRONT
Doctor From British Colum- bia Tells Interesting Story of Army Service on the British Front in Flanders.

LONDON, Sept. IA graphic ac- count of war as an army surgeon sees it is given in a series of articles by Captain Robert V. Dolbey, a surgeon from British Columbia, who enlisted in the British medical corps early in the war Describing a sharp bit of fighting on the British front in France, he says:
 "All day long the machine guns hammered and shrapnel swept that unhappy regiment. By evening they had 400 casualties, including 16 off, cers. So light was the field of fire the brewery behind them was ablaze that the doctor could not get to all his wounded, and they lay out that night. When morning broke and the fire died down only the slightly wounded were alive; the cold rain and exposure effectually robbed the rest of their chance of life.
 Here then, was an instance of the value of warmth, tea and a sheltered dressing station. Of one thing one can be certain, that severely wounded men will not stand the exposure of night on the field and survive. Wounds associated with much shock, compound fracture of the hip and shoulder joints, and fracture of the thigh, chest wounds, will often do quite well, and rapidly recover from the initial shock when the soldier IS kept warm and morphia given
 Here is his description of a buSy night in his field dressing station:
 "Very busy were we in that little house; 60 wounded for morphia ard dressings. They were most grateful for the warmth, for wounded men suf- fer acutely from shock, they are so cold, so sweaty and so thirsty. When the morphia acts and the tea and the inevitable cigarette. that incompar- able sedative for shaken nerves, ar- rive, the whole aspect of a dressing station alters. Unless a man is wounded desperately he soon becomes quite cheerful and very talkative. Nor phia stills the pain without having great narcotic effect in times of cx- citement like this"
 Doctor Dolbey gives the followii- g account of the work of an army SUI geon:
 How does a regimental medical of ficer do his work and what is his equipment? This I was curious to know, for I had not been a surgeon to battalion in the field for 13 years.
 'The doctor to each regiment is now provided with a light, two-wheele1 Maltese cart that carries the medical and surgical panniers. These contain a comprehensive selection of medical and surgical instruments, medicine, condensed milk and beef extract; aii as complete as it is compact. Lack ing only rubber gloves and sterilis- able surgical gowns, there is hardly an operation, of an urgent character, that an adaptable surgeon cannot toi in an emergency Given a house, a stove, and regimental doctors equiN ment, his trained non-commissioned officers and he will have all the es- sentials of temporary hospital"
 His first experience with the work of the German snipers is thus de- scribed:
 "The German snipers were poste.l up the trees in the rising ground cn the right flank and took a steady toll of our men; it was they who got Amos in the open, and Pennyman serv ing his machine gun. One felt th9t one was very glad to be so close up and to be so helpful, and yet one feit | so strangely helpless. There was s much to be done, and so many fer whom surgery could do so little-tEe | abdominal cases that died so soon the brain cases that took so long to die. And of all the dreadful wound in war the lacerating brain wound Is the most narrowing; restless, noisy delirius. the unhappy victims strug- | gle with the man who would restrain | them. babbling of private matters. cs domestic things, crying for water and yet splitting it out when brought | Morphia is useless, chloroform alone prevails to still that brain to sleer. |. for an hour or two, until the morph-c acts. But we were never short of morphia or of chlorofrm; for that we can be grateful"
 EXAMINATIONS AT DOUGLAS