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[Page 23]
blood and exposure, and his life was saved on shore by our party, who gave him coconut milk through the night. His constitution was wonderful and his stature & physique were magnificent. He appears to have been the only man on the upper deck saved. Under chloroform, with Dr. Luther as anaesthetist and Surgeon Todd as assistant, circular amputation in the middle of the arm was performed. The case was somewhat more difficult owing to the great muscular development of the arm. A satisfactory stump was obtained which healed well, but for 3 days the patient ran a very high temperature, due to the erysipelatous wound in his left thigh. The remainder of this day (Wed.) was occupied in cleaning up and dressing wounds and putting up fractures, most of them under anaesthesia. At midnight we went to bed after a spell of over 40 hrs. without sleep. Early on Thursday morning minor injuries were attended to in the sick bay until breakfast. In the forenoon we did general cleaning up and dressing wounds under anaesthesia, and we opened up a knee-joint which had become enormously enlarged through an accumulation of pus not 3 days after receiving a small wound on the knee. A tube was inserted into the joint after free incision & much pus was drained away. By night we had finished off all the operations and the bigger work, as far as initial treatment was concerned, but we had by no means been able to take to the theatre all the cases which required careful & thorough attention. They simply had to be left to the tender mercies of the first aid party.