Letters From the Front

Dated:

In a letter written from France on the 13th of January, Colonel Elder gives this account of what he is doing and his surroundings:

I've just finished making up our returns for the year 1916. I find that we have passed through our hands, in this hospital, 36,091 wounded soldiers, and I've done over 3,700 operations, and have lost less than one half of one percent of these cases. It is a record we are proud of, and evidently it is pleased the military authorities, who have conferred the C.B. upon our respected O.C. Colonel Birkett, Dean of the McGill Medical faculty.

All summer we ran a hospital of 2000 beds, but our winter strength is only 1300 beds. We gave Christmas dinners to 1100 patients. Every ward (25 beds) was decorated with holly and mistletoe, both of which grow profusely in the surrounding country. Our hospital occupies the site of an old Jesuit college, on the outskirts of a French seaport, and covers about 20 acres of ground. All our patients are in buildings or huts, although our personnel are in tents. These hospital huts are heated by stoves, lighted by electricity, and there is a tap of running water, and a drained porcelain sink in each. As a field hospital I think we have one of the best equipped and best located in France. As the surgeon in-chief I am quite proud of my operating room, which was formerly the cow-stable. I've covered the floor with water-proof oil-cloth, which is kept well waxed. There are three operating tables, with a fine electric light over each. The room is heated with hot water coils, and there is always hot and cold water laid on in the taps. I find I can do quite as good work and quite as aseptic as I could do in the operating room of the Montréal General, or any other hospital I have ever seen.

As soon as land dries up, and the locomotion becomes possible on a large-scale, we shall all, doubtless, be very busy this spring, for everything looks like the greatest offensive of the war on this front, at that time. Let us hope that it may be the final thrust! No pen can picture the horrors of this dreadful war. All the ingenuity of science has been and is being used for the diabolical work of destroying the human race. Even we, of the medical service, must bend all our energies towards one main end, viz., the rapid return, if possible, of sick and wounded to the firing line. Any ailment which can possibly wait until the war is over for its cure must wait. No soldier who can take his place in the firing line can be permitted to remain in hospital or go back home. Such is the dire necessity and law of war, and it takes the civil practitioner of medicine some time to realize this military point of view.