The Benson signal., 1917-07-21
Remaking of the Eye Region
4 One of the Wonders
Performed.
OPERATE WHILE GUNS ROAR
Handle Patients With Goodness and
Rapidity Under Constant Menace
of Death-Wounded Loud in
Praises of Surgeons.
BY C. r. BERTELLI.

PariS.-The remaking of the eye
region through the transplantation of
part of the mucous membrane and the
grating of eyelidS and laShes are
among the marvelS of plastic surgery
accomplished in France during the
war by DR.. Louis Borsch, the famous
American oculist, who, since August,
1914, has been chief ophthalmic sur
geon at the huge Grand Palais Mill
Mary hospital in Paris.
Doctor Borsch has just returned
from a trip to the trenches and field
hospitals, which he made at the re-
quest of the department Of health for
the purpose of advising as to the pos
sibility of improving existing methods
of treating wounds of the eye and
saving. the vision of the thousands of
soldiers who in this latter phase of
the war are suffering from such injur-
les.
''Three years of constant daily ex-
perience in the treatment of eye
wounds at the Grand Palais," said
Doctor BOrsch on his return, 'has en-
abled me to witness very consider
able improvement in the methods en-
plOyed, and very gratifying results are
now being obtained. If we could have
taken up our task in 1914 with the
benefit of the experience we have
since acquired, our results would GER
tainly have been more than 100 per
cent better.
Under Menace Of Death.
"The one great lesson we have
learned is that our chances of Oper-
ating successfully in cases of eye
wounds are enormously increased
when patients are brought to us i'm
mediately after they have received
their wounds. The same remark, of
course, applies to all wounds.
''How we'll the heads Of the French
medical service realize this will be
understood when say that during
my Champagne trip 1 found many
cases in which the wounded had been
brought from the trenches to the
field hospitals, washed and operated
upon, with all dressings completed,
within four hours of their receiving
their injuries. The surgeons and
nurses work under the constant men
ace of death. 1 myself saw them
working in frst-aid dugouts and in
the hospitals just behind the lines
amidst never-ending showers Of big
shells, yet they handle their patients
with a cOolneSS, rapidity and skill
which cannot be surpassed in the
operating theater of a Paris hospital.
"The wounded are unanimous in
their praise of the treatment they
receive, and so thorough and efficient
is it that I do not think it possible
to improve upon the work of the
field hospitals that we inspected. We
saw many wounded with severe frac-
lures of the thighs and legs who
were walking about the wards in a
special apparatus four days after
their being wounded; these men as
sured me they had never suffered a
moments pain.
"We also saw many German wound
ed, and there was not one of them who
did not seem pleased to be a prisoner
in French hands. They are treated
with precisely the same care and de-
votion as the French wounded, whose
wards they share, and no distinction
whatever is made.
Dangerous eye wounds, that in
their treatment call for nerves of
steel in the surgeon and a hand that
never deviates a hairs breadth, are
tended amid the most hellish uproar
imaginable; the quick and efficient use
of the eye magnet, for instance for
drawing out shell splinters from the
region of the eye socket has saved
sight in thousands of cases.
Unfortunately beneath the cease
less cataract of exploding shells the