Crude surgery at sea
The following story is based upon real life accounts which
appeared in the Scarborough Daily Post in 1920 as part of the
'Sea Dogs' stories by Forrest Frank. This story of surgery at sea
was told by Captain John Helm.
It cannot be too earnestly impressed upon lads going to sea
that they should take every advantage offering of learning first
aid and as much of surgery as possible, as the following story
serves to demonstrate. On one of the Wydales voyages,
crossing from Cape Verde Islands to New Orleans, through the
Caribbean Sea, the weather very hot and sultry, one of the
sailors, a fine young fellow, was working in the hold, when a
hatch fell upon his head and knocked it against one of the
iron frames, rendering him unconscious and cutting his scalp
from one ear clean to the other side, and laying one part over
the forehead and the other on the neck. I was much perturbed
as to what to do to save the man's life, for though we had a
medicine chest on board, it was before what the supervision of
the Board of Trade is now, when all sorts of appliances have to
be carried and we had no surgical needles. Moreover, the only
knowledge I had painfully learned some years earlier when my
hip was cut to the bone by a wire hawser breaking, and I was
forced to press the edges of the flesh together whilst they
sewed me up. But as the man was bleeding badly, there was no
time to waste, so I got a tailors needle. I had no idea until then
how thick and hard a man's scalp is. I simply could not force
the needle through and had to employ the carpenter's pliers to
pull it through each time. Eventually I succeeded in putting in
fourteen stitches, each stitch separate and forming a figure of
eight knot. This took me fully four hours, after which I put on
bandages and kept dampening them with a solution of
common disinfectant carbolic acid - the only kind we had.
The man, of course, was unconscious all this time, and
remained so from eight o'clock in the morning, when the
accident happened, until about eight o'clock at night. The
atmospheric temperature was rarely below 90 degrees at this
stage of the voyage, and we made him as comfortable as
possible on the fore hatch under the awning. He improved day
by day, and when we reached New Orleans a fortnight later he
was convalescent. I sent for a doctor immediately on arrival, for
I had no notion of taking out the stitches myself - I had had
enough putting them in. The doctor returned to the ship,
asked my permission, and with the man's consent took the
patient to the Charity Hospital to show the medical students
what could be done with crude instruments by unprofessional
men in emergencies. The man recovered and took full duty on
the homeward passage. I saw him no more till twenty years
later, when, as master of the Calliope, my chief mate brought
me a list of the names of the men suggested for the crew. I
spotted the name "Sweet" - an uncommon one - and sent for
the man, and found him to be the same. There was very little
to mark the injury and surgical repair - part of the cut and
three of the fourteen stitches showing.
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