or three days the wounds lost their odour and began to look
clean, whilst the patients lost all signs of the poisoning which had
been so marked before. It may be partly to this that we owe the fact
that we never had a case of tetanus. In all cases we treated our
wounds with solutions of oxygen, and we avoided covering them up
with heavy dressings; and we found that this plan was successful as
well as economical.

Though any detailed description of surgical treatment would be out of
place, there was one which in these surroundings was novel, and
which was perhaps of general interest. Amongst all the cases which
came to us, certainly the most awkward were the fractured thighs. It
was not a question of a broken leg in the ordinary sense of the term.
In every case there was a large infected wound to deal with, and as a
rule several inches of the bone had been blown clean away. At first
we regarded these cases with horror, for anything more hopeless
than a thigh with 6 inches missing it is difficult to imagine. Splints
presented almost insuperable difficulties, for the wounds had to be
dressed two or three times, and however skilfully the splint was
arranged, the least movement meant for the patient unendurable
agony. After some hesitation we attempted the method of fixation by
means of steel plates, which was introduced with such success by Sir
Arbuthnot Lane in the case of simple fractures. The missing portion of
the bone is replaced by a long steel plate, screwed by means of small
steel screws to the portions which remain, "demonstrating," as a
colleague put it, "the triumph of mind over the absence of matter."
The result was a brilliant success, for not only could the limb now be
handled as if there were no fracture at all, to the infinite comfort of
the patient, but the wounds themselves cleared up with great rapidity.
We were told that the plates would break loose, that the screws would
come out, that the patient would come to a bad end through the
violent sepsis induced by the presence of a "foreign body" in the
shape of the steel plate. But none of these disasters happened, the
cases did extremely well, and one of our most indignant critics
returned to his own hospital after seeing them with his pockets full of
plates. The only difficulty with some of them was to induce them to
stop in bed, and it is a fact that on the night of our bombardment I met
one of them walking downstairs, leaning on a dresser's arm, ten days