Burn Victim

Quoted from "Have Scalpel Will Travel" by Missionary Surgeon, Barry L. Hicks, available on amazon.com. "As a trained general surgeon I have to confess that what is called general surgery these days was a very small part of my daily practice. On the other hand I was a very general surgeon. Abnormal gynae and obstetrics, urology, orthopaedics, burns, and trauma surgery made up the majority of my surgical work. Trauma wise the rich seemed to shoot in anger, the middle classes knifed each other and the poor people speared each other. Burns were a real problem as we had no place to isolate them; they were often very extensive; massive amounts of IV fluid were frequently necessary; we had none of the modern methods of following up electrolyte status and only urinary output to assess re-hydration status. These patients took up beds for a long time. Skin grafting is a simple enough procedure (Although we had to use razor blades held in Kocher forceps to collect the split skin.) but requires a lot of post operative management."