The Stader Splint

Abstract

THE medical officers, nurses, and hospital corpsmen follow our armed forces to the end of the world on horseback, coaches, railway trains, ambulances, jeeps, parachutes, skis, airplanes, speedboats, and ships. Military surgery did not change materially prior to the fourteenth century, as the weapons of war prior to that period consisted of arrows, lances, swords, clubs, and stones. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries firearms and gun powder were introduced. That brought with it different types of wounds-more serious wounds, infected wounds, and wounds with compound fractures. Today, with the increase in number and variety of modern weapons, our surgical problems have increased accordingly. The high velocity bullets, powerful and destructive artillery, machine guns, grenades, bombs, mines, torpedoes, poison gas, flame throwers, and various types of booby traps have increased