The Hunterian oration on British military surgery in the time of Hunter and in the Great War : delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of England on February 14th, 1919, the anniversary of Hunter's birth / by Sir Anthony Bowlby.

  • Bowlby, Anthony A. (Anthony Alfred), Sir, 1855-1929.
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Hunterian oration on British military surgery in the time of Hunter and in the Great War : delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of England on February 14th, 1919, the anniversary of Hunter's birth / by Sir Anthony Bowlby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from shock or haemorrhage. To avoid this hot- water bottles are freely used, stretchers are covered with one folded blanket, and the patient is warmly wrapped in others. The car is also usually provided with a pipe heated by a supply of hot air from the exhaust pipe of the engine. The other most important risk is that of injury to the soft tissues by the fragments of broken bones which are jolted b}^ the movements of the car. The extent of this will largely depend on the roughness of the road and its pitting by shells, but to a still greater extent it will depend on the care with which suitable splints are applied. It is the custom in the British Army to splint all fractures as far forward as possible, and in any case at the field ambulance, with the result that, with the apparatus now provided, fractures are so im¬ mobilised that the minimum of risk is incurred and the minimum of pain is caused by the journey. It is not too much to say that very many patients who, without a good splint, would arrive in a state of collapse and die, or else would lose their limbs, now get down to the casualty clearing station with discomfort rather than with suffering. It has been remarked that the modern offensive methods which characterise this war are largely dependent on the invention and development of the petrol engine, and that the tractors of great guns, the war in the air and the war under the sea are all dependent on this device. It is at least some satisfaction to know that it is to the same device