Such plucky conduct as
this merits the warmest praise. In the non-combatant, who has none of
the excitement bred of actual fighting to sustain him, it requires a
high decree of courage to kneel or stoop when every one else is lying
down, and in this exposed position first to find the tiny bullet
puncture, and then bandage the wound satisfactorily. Many and many a
life has been saved by this conduct on the part of our medical staff,
for if an important artery is severed by a bullet or shell-splinter a
man may easily bleed to death in ten minutes. I have myself on one
occasion in Crete seen jets of blood escaping from the femoral artery of
a Turkish soldier, without being able to render him any assistance. In
short, it is believed that quite three-fifths of those who perish on a
battle-field die from loss of blood. In some cases a soldier may, by
digital pressure or by improvising a rough tourniquet, check the flow of
blood from a wound, but the nervous prostration which accompanies a
wound inflicted by a bullet travelling nearly 2,000 feet a second is so
great, that most men seriously wounded are physically incapable of
rendering such assistance to themselves, even if they understand the
elementary amount of anatomy requisite for the treatment.
At the same time it is only fair to point out that stretcher-bearers who
advance during an engagement and render this gallant assistance to the
wounded do so entirely at their own risk and must take their chance of
getting hit.
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