Medicine Looks Ahead 231 



Nor do we have to bring the soldier to the blood donor; the 

 transfusion can go to him, and halt shock before it can get 

 started. Officers say they have found that in bad burns it is 

 the plasma that is lost. By immediate transfusions the liquid 

 can be restored before death occurs. "You can see the impor- 

 tance of this at once when you realize that an overwhelming 

 percentage of the injuries incurred by the men in the armored 

 corps are burns," said Major Richard D. Mudd, head of the 

 department of Field Medicine and Surgery, Carlisle Barracks, 

 Pennsylvania. 



The sulfa drugs, which keep down infection, and blood 

 plasma, which fortifies a wounded man against the shock and 

 puts new life into his veins, are perfect team mates to protect 

 our fighting men now, and our working men and women in 

 peacetime. 



Mobile X-Ray Unit 



The battalion aid station, where the wounded man may 

 receive the first of several plasma transfusions, may be com- 

 pared with the emergency room in an ordinary hospital. It 

 provides swift, expert, lifesaving treatment and surgery. One 

 of its mobile units, to which many a soldier owes his life, is 

 the mobile X-ray machine. In the first World War these ma- 

 chines were huge, clumsy affairs, not easily moved. The pres- 

 ent battlefield X ray can go to the front with the soldier. 

 Built so compactly that it can be fitted into three small trucks, 

 it weighs only three hundred and ninety-nine pounds and can 

 be assembled in thirty minutes. 



The soldier does not have to wait until he reaches a base 

 hospital before X-ray pictures can be taken of his injury. This 

 can be done an hour or so after the wound is received, and 

 treatment begun immediately. Besides taking X-ray pictures, 

 the machine also has a fluoroscopic screen through which 



