Evening star., 1917-11-04

Special Correspondence of The Star.
PARIS. October %. 1917.
EIHE curtain is rising on 100000
Ill Americans in France.
Never before were such masses
. of Americans struggling with
the French language. Yet even those
who speak French well continually
founder for the right word. How could
it be otherwise? The words are tech
meal.
For three years Alec Stewart. drug
gist of the American Ambulance Hos
pital of NeuillyParis. of glorious
memory (now American Red Cross Mill
tary Hospital, No. -. jotted down use
full questions asked by newly arriving
American war doctors. nurses. ambu-
lance chauffeurs and auxiliaries, in
French-or words to that effect.
Have you ever suffered from FROST
bite?' Tell the man he may smoke"
do you want to communicate with
your friends?' THE French cyclist
can wait" Give him bran bath"
The musculo-spiral nerve? In French
it's called the radial." How do you say
evaporating dish?" The child has ade-
noids" Fried calfs brains and lemon
jelly" The inuftier got lost in the pot
d'echappement.'
Il
1t took three years to compile the
real vocabularies, phrases. tables.
forms, equivalents and questions need
ed by Red Cross workers. emitting all
literature. Every ambulance driver
knows Alec. When you burn your hand
you go to him for ambrine. He helps
the little nurses with their thermome-
ters in Centigrade. and puts doctors
wise to gentian in three codexes.
All paregoric looks alike to you?
Correct. Paregoric, iodine and few
other big tinctures' were internation-
allied short time before the war; but
the mass of tinctures are still of differ
ent strengths in the British. French and
American pharmacopoeias. Also. in
continental dispensing. all liquids. ex-
cept when ordered in drops q. e.. in
quantities of less than half a cubic
centimeter). are weighed. not measured.
So. when they made this extraordinary
American ambulance booklet they put
in pages of equivalents of weights
brought to measures. or either to met
ric.
The nurses thermometers, for in
stance. In the Paris Herald, the "Old
Philadelphia lady" has been worrying
readers for eighteen years past. daily,
how to tell how hot 1t Is in Centigrade.
Here is new way, the best: Forty de-
grees Centigrade equals 104 degrees
Fahrenheit You can easily remember
1T for a basis. Then every half degree
Centigrade equals one degree Fahren-
heit less one-tenth. You have only to
subtract. There are even two little tape
measures printed side by side, in inches
and centimeters. compared.
1t is The Ambulance Hospital Aid
Book" published by Hachette, Paris.
Stewart, the compiler, was head pre-
scription clerk at an American phar-
macy in the Rue de la Paix before the
war. and he went straight to the drug
room Of our palatial NeuillyParis Hos
pital with the first doctors. nurses and
wounded. How many American sur
geons, new to the war and to Paris.
have been saved from fioundering over
their vocabularies. foreign drug and IN
strument purchases. explanations with
French confreres. and even the forms
and etiquettes of war!
Date. place, by what missile. bullet
or projectile (rifie, machine gun. re-
volver). shell-splinter, sword, bayonet,
bowie knife, gas, LIQUID fire, boiling