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There were many other disturbances, men coming and going, one of the battery officers appearing for a moment dirty and dishevelled, and always the wounded drowsy or in delirium, watching with dull eyes the evening shadows, talking excitedly in their sleep. Semyonov called me to help in the operating room. Within the next two hours he had carried out two amputations with admirable cool composure.
How enormous a difference this keeping of the germs out of the wound has made may be gathered from the fact that, while in earlier days, before Lister showed us how to avoid this danger, surgeons used to lose seventy-five per cent of their amputations of the thigh, from pus infection, or blood poisoning, now they can perform a hundred operations of this sort and not lose a single case.
Most of the amputations in the new settlements, and they were quite frequent, were per formed by some one practitioner who, possessing originally a reputation, was enabled by this circumstance to acquire an experience that rendered him deserving of it; and Elnathan had been present at one or two of these operations.
This mistake may be ascribed to Hood's want of physical activity, occasioned by severe wounds and amputations, which might have been considered before he was assigned to command. Maurice of Saxe won Fontenoy in a litter, unable from disease to mount his horse; but in war it is hazardous to convert exceptions into rules.
I found that the great mass of men who had undergone amputations for many months felt the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold.
The amputations were few, and, each vessel having sent a surgeon, these were all made, while the other appliances had been successfully used in such cases as would be benefited by them. The day was drawing near a close, and the distance from the fleet was so great as to call for exertion.
The ancient surgeon could doubtless perform ordinary operations amputations and excisions with neatness, and the ancient physician knew perfectly well what to do with the ordinary complaints the fevers and agues, the bilious attacks, the gout, or the dropsy but he was baffled by any new conditions.
"You will find all the wounded I have dressed in the steerage; those they have brought me down dead are in the cockpit. There have been five amputations already the master is badly wounded, and Mr Williams the mate, is killed: those whom I have not been able to attend to yet, are here in the gun-room. You must ascertain what the captain wishes to know yourself, Mr Keene.
One is apt to be a bit touchy at first about these little things, and though I had seen the most terrible wounds in our hospital, amputations had always rattled me thoroughly. The little Aunt subsequently entertained the austere A.P.M., while her papers were being put in order, with most interesting details of my childhood and how she had brought me up from a baby!
Pepys relates how he met a seaman returning from fighting the Dutch with his eye-socket "stopped with oakum," and as late at least as the Battle of Trafalgar it was customary, in amputations, to treat the bleeding stump with boiling pitch as a cauterant. In his general attitude towards the sick and wounded the old-time naval surgeon was not unlike Garth, Queen Anne's famous physician.
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