Word: trueta
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...raids, doctors found that victims whose legs had been pinned under timbers or masonry for several hours sometimes died mysteriously of kidney failure. The puzzled doctors called this strange death "crush syndrome." To find out what a crushed leg had to do with the kidneys, Spanish-born Dr. Josep Trueta and four co-workers at Oxford's Nuffield Institute for Medical Research* began some blood-circulation experiments on rabbits...
...White. Wound treatment was kept simple: gunshot wounds had their edges cut away, were not sewed up; wounds involving bone were usually put in plaster casts (the Orr-Trueta method which got its first full tryout in the Spanish War; TIME, July 8, 1940), and left alone, perhaps for weeks. "Some surgeons made a habit of using sphagnum moss* for surgical dressings...
...with the Nazis only a few jumps behind, hard-pressed, sweating surgeons had to have some new and faster technique of treating wounds. Fortunately, most of them had read last winter the revolutionary work on wound surgery written after the small-scale war in Spain by brilliant Dr. Josep Trueta of Barcelona, now in England (TIME, Jan. 15). In treating 1,073 projectile fractures, Surgeon Trueta obtained wholly satisfactory results in 976 cases and there were only six deaths. His method: instead of lengthy and painstaking work in old-fashioned suturing and splinting (sewing up wounds and applying strips...
...plaster holds he will come to no harm." French surgeons in the War of 1870 pioneered the plaster closed method and in World War I it was used to some extent by U. S. Army Surgeon Hiram Winnett Orr, now of Lincoln, Neb., who contributed a preface to Dr. Trueta's book, Treatment of War Wounds And Fractures (Hoeber...
...Trueta admitted that there is a minor objection to "closed" treatment: a terrible stench. Although it is best to keep the original plaster in place until the limb heals (usually from six to eight weeks), the cast sometimes has to be changed, when the smell becomes unbearable. Dr. Trueta discovered that a salve of brewers' yeast, applied directly to the wound, reduced the odor, did not interfere with healing. Since yeast was scarce in warring Spain, most of his cases stank to high heaven...