Experiments with surgery and medicine

• Dealing with infection

  • Debridement - removal of dead or infected tissue
  • Carrell-Dakin method - salt solution to the wound
  • Amputation - removal of infected limbs (240,000 men lost limbs by 1918)
• Thomas Splint

  • designed to keep limbs and joints still during transportation and surgery
  • improved survival rate from 20% to 82%
• Mobile X-ray

  • used to locate bullets and shrapnel in wounds
  • problems: couldn't identify all objects, took several minutes (it was difficult for soldiers in pain to sit still) and the machine often overheated
• Blood Transfusions

  • Developed by Lawrence Bruce Robertson
  • Used a syringe to transfer blood from donor to patient
  • Carried out in Base hospitals and casualty clearing stations
• Brain Surgery

  • About 20% of wounds were to the head, face or neck
  • brain injuries were hard to treat as few doctors had experience and it was difficult for the patients affected to pass through the chain of evacuation
• Brain Surgery

  • About 20% of wounds were to the head, face or neck
  • brain injuries were hard to treat as few doctors had experience and it was difficult for the patients affected to pass through the chain of evacuation
  • Harvey Cushing - used magnet to remove metal fragments from using local anaesthetics (general anaesthetics caused brain swelling)
• Plastic Surgery

  • Harold Gilles developed method to restore and rebuild destroyed facial features
  • There were almost 12,000 operations
• Blood banks


  People that helped solve the issue of storing blood:

  • Richard Lewisohn 1915 found that adding sodium nitrate to blood stopped it from clotting
  • Richard Weil found that blood could be stored for up to 2 days if refrigerated
  • Francis Rous and James Turner in1916 found that by adding citrate glucose solution to blood, blood could then be stored for up to 4 weeks