New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1918-07-28

lSLS Ill Cllc LdSs ana SUlll iuTkS III tiic
backward parts Of the West, in the
balkans, as mentioned, in parts o.
Russia, in Mexico, etc. Germany and
Austria are being again invaded by
typhus, which was brought in by
Russian prisoners Of war, and from
there it has spread to the civilian
populations. A number Of eminent
physicians in Germany and Austria
have fallen victims to the fever. The
eradication of the disease will be-
come an important after the war
problem with the Central Empires.
Thus far typhus has not become a
menace to the armies or the peoples
on the Western fronts"
One of the curious medical para
doxes of the war, DR.. Flexner points
out, is the fact that surgeons were
at first hampered in their treatment
of wounds because they knew too
much. The operating room methods
Of recent years, before the war, had
virtually dispensed with the lore of
antiseptic surgery, because aseptic
surgery, or the prevention of infec-
ton before it appeared, had wholly
supplanted it. Thus the surgeons,
face to face in France with condi-
lions which made infection inevita-
BILE, were for time at loss.
Modern surgery" DR.. Flexner
explains, "has been developed since
our Civil War. The constantly in
creasing knowledge and skill ac-
quired by surgeons had enabled them
within the past quarter of century
practically to abolish wound infec-
ton. Hence first so-called antiseptic,
then aseptic surgery arose. The first
dealt with wounds already infected
and strove to render them clean or
sterile, the latter resulted from re-
fined operative technique which ex-
cluded infection. Latterly infected
wounds became rare in the best hos
pitfalls, and the mass Of our surgeons
of the present had had little expert
ence in the treatment of surgical in
lection.
"Trench warfare was to change
the whole outlook of war surgery.
Had it been possible to succor the
wounded Immediately after injury,
the terrible ravages of infection
which have cost SO many precious
lives and have been the cause of so
many thousands of permanent Grip
pies would have been controlled.
Moreover, had not SO much of the
actual fighting been carried out in, if
not actually under, the ground in a
country for centuries in a high state
of cultivation, the almost perfect
conditions favoring wound infection
would not have existed. The element
of delay, amounting to hours and
days at times before the wounded
could be rescued and brought to hos
pitfalls, added to trench warfare,
yielded unimagined numbers and
kinds of infected wounds"
Still another of the wars para
doxes is the fact that certain class
of diseases fo0rished in France pre-
cisely because the country was so
civilized.
"Soil highly tertilized with animal
excrement," Dr.. Flexner explains,
contains the spores or seeds of the
tetanus or lockjaw bacilli, of the ba-
cillus Of gaseous gangrene and of
other bacilli, which, entering LAGER
ated wounds, cause death and disor-
ganization Of the tissues; and be-
sides these particular bacilli there
are omnipresent the germs of sup
puration. Thus it happened at the
beginning of the war that tetanus or
lockjaw was distressingly prevalent.
The mortality, too, of the cases was