the operating room, all the young
students and the old students crowded round to see the case. It was all
torn away, the flesh from that right thigh, from knee to buttock, down
to the bone, and the stench was awful. The various students came forward
and timidly pressed the upper part of the thigh, the remaining part, all
that remained of it, with their fingers, and little crackling noises
came forth, like bubbles. Gas gangrene. Very easy to diagnose. Also the
bacteriologist from another hospital in the region happened to be
present, and he made a culture of the material discharged from that
wound, and afterwards told the _Medecin Chef_ that it was positively and
absolutely gas gangrene. But the _Medecin Chef_ had already taught the
students that gas gangrene may be recognized by the crackling and the
smell, and the fact that the patient, as a rule, dies pretty soon.

They could not operate on Rochard and amputate his leg, as they wanted
to do. The infection was so high, into the hip, it could not be done.
Moreover, Rochard had a fractured skull as well. Another piece of shell
had pierced his ear, and broken into his brain, and lodged there. Either
wound would have been fatal, but it was the gas gangrene in his torn-out
thigh that would kill him first. The wound stank. It was foul. The
_Medecin Chef_ took a curette, a little scoop, and scooped away the dead
flesh, the dead muscles, the dead nerves, the dead blood-vessels. And so
many blood-vessels being dead, being scooped away by that sharp curette,
how could the blood circulate in the top half of that flaccid thigh? It
couldn't. Afterwards, into the deep, yawning wound, they put many
compresses of gauze, soaked in carbolic acid, which acid burned deep
into the germs of the gas gangrene, and killed them, and killed much
good tissue besides. Then they covered the burning, smoking gauze with
absorbent cotton, then with clean, neat bandages, after which they
called the stretcher bearers, and Rochard was carried from the
operating table back to the ward.

The night nurse reported next morning that he had passed a night of
agony.

"_Cela pique! Cela brule!_" he cried all night, and turned from side
to side to find relief. Sometimes he lay on his good side; sometimes he
lay on his bad side, and the night nurse turned him from side to side,
according to his fancy, because she knew that on neither one side nor
the other would he find relief, except such mental relief as he go