SIMPLEST SURGERY AT ITS BEST.
MAJOR LOUIS L. SEAMAN told us months ago of the wonderful saving results of Japanese military surgery. Surgeon-General Suzuki, of the Japanese navy, addressing an assembly of American doctors in this city, ascribes these marvels of healing to a scarcely less marvelous simplicity of treatment. The Mikado's doctors permitted nature to do her share. That is about all. As little as possible was done to injured men on the fields of battle. Limbs were not hurriedly cut off. Angry wounds were not aggravated by probing after bullets or pieces of shell. There were prompt washings of the edges of wounds with aseptic cotton dipped in sterilized water. Then the bandaged patients were hurried to comfortable hospitals, where healings "by first intention" were encouraged by the simple process of letting things alone. With ready courage the Japanese adapted to field purposes methods which, as Dr. Suzuki said, are perfectly familiar to our surgeons in ordinary practise. By the theories of practitioners who believe radically in the use of antiseptics, or poison-killers, such reliance on the mere cleanliness of aseptic washes and bandages should be many times fatal. In the Japanese instance it worked in happy conjunction with a system of field and hospital hygiene through which mortality by preventable disease, usually greater than by shot and shell, became the smaller percentage. Unthinkable numbers of limbs and lives have been sacrificed on and after battle-fields, while the world waited for some such common-sense surgery as the Japanese employed.—N. Y. World.