Life-Destroying and Life-Saving

1900

An eminent physician lately called attention to the important part wars have taken in hospital development. He declared that the Crimean War developed the trained nurse and the training-school. In the American Civil War, medical men learned that small hospitals, and even hospital tents, are better than large enclosed structures for the sick and wounded. To the knowledge thus gained is due the pavilion tent.

It was war, also, it is asserted, that led, not to the discovery, but to the introduction, of antiseptic surgery. Medical science will profit by the conflict now in progress in South Africa. Through disease and wounds there treated, benefit will come to the civilized world.

Thus out of a great evil may come a great good; for war compels resort to every expedient to save the lives of one's own soldiers, no less than to destroy the lives of those in the hostile army.

Moreover, the experience gained in the effort to save life is at the service of the world. There is nothing provincial or selfish in genuine surgical or medical skill. Its work and triumphs are for all men. Quackery conceals information which may help the race, except as it disposes of the knowledge for cash; but the surgeons and the physicians of approved attainment and experience feel that their mission is limited only by the bounds of possible service to their kind. In war, in peace, under favorable or perilous conditions, appreciated or criticised, the good physician, the conscientious operator, does his duty, and is discontented only when his service is less complete than his professional ideal. — Youth's Companion.