Surgeons who can spare a
scalpel, an artery clip or two, ligatures--catgut or silk--and
forceps, may be certain of having them used at once. Bandages rolled
by kindly American hands will not lie unclaimed on the quay at Havre
or Calais.
So many things about these little hospitals of France are touching,
without having any particular connection. There was a surgeon in one
of these isolated villages, with an X-ray machine but no gloves or
lead screen to protect himself. He worked on, using the deadly rays to
locate pieces of shell, bullets and shrapnel, and knowing all the time
what would happen. He has lost both hands.
Since my return to America the problems of those who care for the sick
and wounded have been further complicated, among the Allies, by the
inhuman use of asphyxiating gases.
Sir John French says of these gases:
"The effect of this poison is not merely disabling, or even painlessly
fatal, as suggested in the German press. Those of its victims who do
not succumb on the field and who can be brought into hospitals suffer
acutely and, in a large proportion of cases, die a painful and
lingering death. Those who survive are in little better case, as the
injury to their lungs appears to be of a permanent character and
reduces them to a condition that points to their being invalids for
life.
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