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Re: Leeches (Re: Metric Time (was Re: Why not 13 months? (Was La Systeme Metrique))
Peter Ceresole (peter@cara.demon.co.uk)
Sat, 14 Oct 1995 15:51:45 +0100
In article <DGEtqH.CH6@frackit.com>,
dave@frackit.com (Dave Ratcliffe) wrote:
>Maggots to eat away necrotic tissue. It's already being done.
Has been for a long time. I was talking to an army medical officer who
served in a neurological unit in Italy in 1943/44. They had a lot of head
wounds from the immediate fighting, plus quite a few partisans from
Yugoslavia who were brought in from the hills, and had sometimes been over
a week in transit. He said that they would turn up in a terrible state, and
when they opened up the the bandages covering the skull they would
sometimes find maggots living in there, under the broken skull, on the
membrane covering the brain. He said that these fellows' chances of
survival were higher than for the others (pretty low instead of almost
zero). He was very clear about the health advantages of maggots cleaning
wounds.
They were incidentally among the early units using penicillin; he was very
clear indeed about the advantges of *that*.
Peter
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