Page:Science and War.djvu/56

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the unfavourable conditions of life in the field where the troops are crowded together in surroundings which are provocative of disease and fatally adapted to spread it when it appears. To this burden of suffering must be added the perpetual succession of wounds which the increased effectiveness of our weapons of offence makes more and more horrible in their nature and extent. The jagged bits of our high explosive shells with their high velocity, carry deep into the tissues fragments of clothes soaked with all the filth of the trenches, and the torn and mutilated limbs present problems to the surgeons of infinitely more complex a character than those that present themselves in civil life. No wonder that all the resources of modern civilization are taxed beyond their strength in coping with the accumulated mass of sick and wounded that stream in from the battle lines of a war under modern conditions.

But here Science has given no doubtful help in this war. The fruits of the experiments of Pasteur and the deductions his genius led him to draw from 50