Rachel-+surgery

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What was surgery like in WW1?
"Every war stimulates medical research. It’s sad, but true" (Freemon). World War I advanced surgery to an unprecedented level through new discoveries and treatments. However, it was a struggle to fix the horrible injuries sustained by soldiers. Many soldiers died during attempts at reconstructive surgery, amputations, and other experimenting in the surgical field, yet these experimentations improved conditions and advanced medicine. During this time, surgery was becoming more successful by leaps and bounds, attempting to overcome problems that killed soldiers, like infection and gangrene, with new inventions in the field, like transfusions and asepsis. This war, in the history of surgery, was important enough to be repeated in the famous novel, //A Farewell to Arms//, in many instances, such as when the main character is hurt and the man above him hemorrhages to death. Both failures and successes in surgery appear in this book, showing that, to save soldiers, surgery had to become better. Para 1: bacteria-cleaning: A main reason for improved conditions in surgery was a discovery at the beginning of WWI of bacteria. In knowing what caused infections and the danger of open wounds, surgeons started using antiseptics and being cleaner. This made a huge impact on infectious diseases and saved many lives, but it was not enough, some men were not so easy to cure, and more death or permanent damage to the body became involved due to devastating numbers of hurt soldiers which could delay a surgery for more than two days. Fighting against disease and infection would save soldiers lives, such as the important invention of vaccinations against diseases like typhus and tetanus. These measures helped give surgeons time to try to come up with a solution for wounded soldier. A common example doctors had to deal with during the war was shrapnel wounds, or foreign bodies which had been imbedded into soldiers flesh. The surgery created to deal with this was also important, debridement, supposedly begun by a French medical officer called Dr. Riche, in 1914. This cleaner method not only removed the foreign bodies, but the surgeon would also cut out the skin surrounding the ‘contused and infected wound’ replacing it with a ‘clean healthy incised wound’. This was possible only because of the new cleanliness in hospitals, without antiseptics, bacteria wound have set into the open wounds much more often. Para 2: blood: death due to shock, and blood loss. The last two were interrelated, discovered Henderson in 1908, and along with the discovery of blood typing, saving soldiers from shock by blood transfusion was possible. Yet, during the war, blood had to be drawn on the spot since there was no blood stored. Another problem with gaping wounds was hemorrhaging, or when blood poured freely from wounds and surgeons could not plug the wound to stop the bleeding and often the patient would die. Surgeons during World War One could only wait for clots or try to suppress the bleeding. Para 3: problems with surgery—amputations : A huge problem with surgery at the time was amputations with their many complications. Amputations however, became less frequent during the war due to the new surgeon procedures. Infection in the leg, many times the horrible gangrene, which was very infectious, could set in before or even after the amputation. Yet, with more cleanliness and antiseptics, it had almost disappeared in hospitals. Conclusion: The achievements of surgeons in WWI surpass the more advanced surgical achievements of the present day, in how fast the surgical innovations came in such a short time period due to necessity. “ Medicine intersects with everything” (Leonard). The breakthroughs on the surgical front during WWI were caused by the necessity of dealing with the before unseen injuries from WWI. From the 2 million casualties from the war, 700,000 died, with a hospital mortality rate of 12% or more. Wounded WWI soldiers were used for the advancement of surgery.

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