Excerpt from Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1916, Vol. 16 Although the year which has just passed has not been distinguished by any great advance in medicine - unless it be reckoned an achievement that, thanks to science, millions of men have lived in camps through the seasons without being decimated by infectious disease - research has not stood still. A survey of the periodical literature of the year reveals many contrasts with 1914. The patching and mending the physically less fit no doubt goes on, but there has been less writing about it - about the surgery of the over-civilised colon, for instance, or about the diagnosis of fortuitous incurable lesions of the nervous system, or the toxic effects of eating wrongly or too much. The most prominent place in medical literature has been occupied by work designed to prevent, or repair, the ravages of war. Speaking only in the most general way, it may be said that the teaching of military surgery and medicine in previous wars has proved of comparatively small value, except as regards organisation, in the present conflict. Many of the lessons of the South African \var, in particular, have had to be unlearned. There our army was small, the rifle was the principal weapon, transport was bad, typhoid was rife, and sepsis was trifling; here the armies are immense, the weapon is the high explosive, transport is unsurpassed, typhoid has been abolished, and sepsis stands out as the great danger. It very quickly became apparent, to the surprise, we imagine, of those whose experience depended on the results of civil surgery at home, that our present methods of dealing with sepsis in war are far from effectual. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.