The shoulder : rupture of the supraspinatus tendon and other lesions in or about the subacromial bursa / E.A. Codman.

  • Codman, E. A. (Ernest Amory), 1869-1940.
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The shoulder : rupture of the supraspinatus tendon and other lesions in or about the subacromial bursa / E.A. Codman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    himself of more use as a man in helping steadily for two days to rescue those still alive who were lmried or crushed in wrecks of houses than in his role as a physician. Having left, with regret, the work in Halifax, where, as Major in the Medical Corps of the Canadian Army, I could have been of real service, and having returned to my hospital purely to try to save money, an indescribable restlessness came over me, until in Septem¬ ber, I found myself in our own Medical Corps, wrestling, as Senior Surgeon of the Coast Defences of the* Delaware, with the impossible “paper work of our Army, in the midst of the influenza. Presently, what with patients and enlisted men assigned as orderlies to care for them, I had more soldiers under me than had the general in command of the three old forts. At the end of my endurance, I stood one night in the upper ward of the old hospital in which had been concentrated those whom I judged to he hopeless. My other medical officers were siek abed — even my tireless and capable junior, Captain Ellis, was on that night exhausted. The floor was slippery with bloody sputum; there were no nurses; no petticoats of any kind; no bedpans; no gauze and few medicines; in fact, there was no medical or nursing care. Those that were able lurched to a toilet with the aid of some other soldier who had yesterday been a recruit and now found him¬ self an orderly in this death house, mopping up bloody slime from the floor or cleaning the bed of another boy after he had helped to dump the body and the soiled blankets in a box. I turned and said good-night to those boys who were facing their dangerous duty as bravely as those who fought in the trenches. After a few hours I was able to get up and go on with the “paper work,” reporting the num¬ bers of sick and dead, filling out the death certificates, making applications for transfer of insane recruits and otherwise obeying the orders of my competent subordinate, a Sergeant of the Medical Corps. There was no time to test the simplicity of my system of records, hut there was necessity for me to learn the use and deficiencies of the Army System. In \ ovember. as Regimental Surgeon in the Artillery, I had a card for every one of 1,800 men, and enjoyed the new duty of study¬ ing how to keep men well, and of getting rid of them when sick. Even the old army sergeant was surprised when I would send for a certain list of men to see whether they still had scabies, or some other minor ailment, and no orders had come for an inspection. He gave me to understand that it was customary to wait until a disease had spread sufficiently to attract some attention from a mysterious medical head¬ quarters, which then issued orders to inspect and report. 1 here was