—94— 



The American Red Cross had just begun to experiment with these compresses 

 when the armistice was signed so that none were sent over seas. The British, 

 however, made a great many sphagnum compresses of this type during the war, 

 both for dressings and for spUnts. The following account has been sent me by 

 Miss Margaret Leechman, supervisor of sphagnum compresses at Edinburgh, 

 Scotland. 



Compressed Moss Dressings as made in Edinburgh, Scotland 



Compressing sphagnum moss was a new experiment to Scotland and even 

 at the end of three and a half years we could not make compressed moss dressings 

 anything like the German ones, to give the devil his due. 



Of course, all the moss sent to our department was supposed to be cleaned. 

 Our first process was sublimating it, unnecessary, I believe, as it was always 

 sterilized before it was used, but it was a precautionary measure. For sublimat- 

 ing we had a large porcelain bath with a wringer and a traveling band attached 

 to one end. The sublimate was the usual mixture of perchloride of mercury. 

 The worker who soaked the moss had also to spread it evenly over the band, so 

 that in going through the wringer it all got an equal pressure. As only 28 ozs. 

 of sublimate to a pound of moss was allowed to remain in after it had been through 

 the wringer, we had to be fairly particular. At the other end of the band it fell 

 oft" into a sack fixed there for the purpose. Another worker's job was to remove 

 these sacks when full and pass them on into the drying room. This was just a 

 long room with drying trays on either side, as high up as we could manage them. 

 These trays were wooden frames with wire netting across the bottom; the lowest 

 one had a piece of mosquito netting over the wire to prevent the smaller pieces 

 of moss falling through to the floor. The heat in this room was anything from 

 80° to 118° F. We tried not to work in it when it was the latter. When the 

 moss was dry it was emptied into long deep boxes on castors, also known as tanks, 

 and these when filled, were pushed into the next room where the dressings were 

 actually made. 



In this room the moss was first weighed out, 4^ oz. or 4 oz. into basins, then 

 it was taken over by the first of four workers, who emptied it into a wooden frame 

 three inches deep, covered over with a thin piece of cloth, 4^^ oz. of moss into 

 a frame 12" x 14", 4 oz. into a frame 10" x 14". The next worker smoothed 

 out the moss, packed it well into the corners, then slid it on to the next. We 

 found that the firmness of the compressed cake depended almost entirely on how 

 it was packed. The third worker pressed it firmly down with a compressed air 

 machine (weight 300 pounds) made for the purpose, while the fourth folded the 

 cloth tightly over the moss, but still keeping it in shape, then lifted away the 

 frame and laid the cake on a zinc tray. There it remained until nine others were 

 laid very exactly on the top of it, making a pile about 20 inches high. This pile 

 was then put under a hydraulic press and compressed to the height of about three 

 inches. We tried various different machines for compressing, from 80 tons to 

 200 tons pressure, and we found 160 tons about the best. After compressing, the 

 cloths were taken off^ the cakes, their edges trimmed and cut into our various sizes 



