Speed, expert care and drugs save the wounded.

Speed, expert care and drugs save the wounded. Official figures for Alllied casualties in France are 30 per cent less than expected and only three out of every 100 wounded men die. Once a casualty is evacuated to a base hospital in Britain, the chances are 269 to one the he will recover. The answer lies in speedy handling of wounds, expert care and modern drugs. First aid men go into battle with Allied soldiers, thus giving them the benefit of constant medical care from within a few minutes of being wounded. Complete surgery tents with teams of sergeins ready night and day, together with supplies of blood plasma and penicillin, are always within an ambulance journey of the front lines. In the field hospital, plasma and drugs are administred to counteract shock and unless a patient has been terribly wounded, his life has been saved by the time he starts the trip to a base hospital. Mass air evacuation is another important development in handling casualties of this war. Thirty per cent of all troops wounded in France have been flown to Britain, saving hours in critical cases where time has meant life. Lieutenant Helena Noylan of Richmond, Maine, and Captain Edward S. Hoffman of Rochester, New York, both of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, adminster to a patient who has suffered an abdominal wound as he lies in the shock tent of a U.S. evacuation hospital in Brittany, France. The process in operation is the Wagensteen method, which witholds fluids from the stomach, thereby keeping it dry. At the same time, whole blood, flown in from England, is being administered.