Word: shrapnel
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...London to write some of the most vivid stories of World War II (see p. 26). Three of the 22 landed on the Dieppe beaches and got back alive. Only casualty was International News Service's Larry Meier, who was cut in the face and chest by shrapnel but got himself patched up and wrote his story...
When a soldier is wounded by shrapnel, or a civilian by splinters of flying glass, don't treat the wound with an antiseptic. This piece of advice was given by the Journal of the American Medical Association last week. In fact, said the editor of its correspondence column, "The use of iodine or mercurials in such wounds is to be discouraged or even forbidden." Reason: antiseptics may kill more body cells than bacteria, thereby prevent healing. First Aiders should do no more than stop bleeding, place a pad of sterile gauze on the wound...
Since the old scourge of tetanus can be controlled by injections of antitoxin, the main germ to worry about in open wounds is the bacillus which causes gas gangrene. Open wounds should be treated thus: 1) all glass, bullets, stones, shrapnel, etc. must be cut out of the wound; 2) all dead and bruised tissue-breeding grounds for the bacillus-must be snipped away so that the blood stream can get directly at the germs and destroy them; 3) sulfanilamide powder should be sprinkled on the raw surface, and the patient kept at rest...
...also visited a Soviet hospital, the Central Institute of Experimental Medicine, watched Brain Surgeon Grastchenkov take shrapnel out of a soldier's brain...
That night I met a young lieutenant of the Dutch Navy in a downtown hotel. He limped badly from a piece of shrapnel in his thigh, a souvenir of the Battle of the Java Sea. The doctor had forbidden him to leave the ship, but he hadn't been ashore for nine months. After a couple of highballs he had to leave because the leg hurt so badly, but before leaving he told his story: since the war started in '39, he had had seven ships shot out from under him, and the last time only...