wall of the abdomen which
looks so innocent, but which, in this war at least, means, apart from a
difficult and dangerous operation, a terrible death. With all these we
had to deal as rapidly and completely as possible, reducing each
case to a form which it would be practicable to nurse, where the
patient would be free from unnecessary pain, and where he would
have the greatest possible chance of ultimate recovery. Of course, all
this was done under anaesthesia. What a field hospital must have
been before the days of anaesthesia is too horrible to contemplate.
Even in civil hospitals the surgeons must have reached a degree of
"Kultur" beside which its present exponents are mere children. It is
not so many years since a famous surgeon, who was fond of walking
back from his work at the London Hospital along the Whitechapel
Road, used to be pointed to with horror by the Aldgate butchers,
whose opinion on such a subject was probably worth consideration.
But now all that is changed. The surgeon can be a human being
again, and indeed, except when he goes round his wards, his patients
may never know, of his existence. They go to sleep in a quiet
anteroom, and they waken up in the ward. Of the operation and all its
difficulties they know no more than their friends at home. Perhaps
even more wonderful is the newer method of spinal anaesthesia,
which we used largely for the difficult abdominal cases. With the
injection of a minute quantity of fluid into the spine all sensation
disappears up to the level of the arms, and, provided he cannot see
what is going on, any operation below that level can be carried out
without the patient knowing anything about it at all. It is rather
uncanny at first to see a patient lying smoking a cigarette and reading
the paper whilst on the other side of a screen a big operation is in
progress. But for many cases this method is unsuitable, and without
chloroform we should indeed have been at a loss. The Belgians are
an abstemious race, and they took it beautifully. I am afraid they were
a striking contrast to their brothers on this side of the water.
Chloroform does not mix well with alcohol in the human body, and the
British working man is rather fond of demonstrating the fact.

With surgery on rather bold lines it was extraordinary how much could
be done, especially in the way of saving limbs. During the whole of
our stay in Antwerp we never once had to resort to an amputation.
We were dealing wi