Immersion Foot, Airman's Hand

The painful trench foot of World War I has reappeared in the present comparatively trenchless war. In World War I, soldiers got trench foot from sitting for hours with their feet in mud or cold water. The result was something like severe chilblains, something like a burn: circulation slowed; feet became numb, swollen and white; sudden warming sometimes brought blisters and ulcers. The worst cases got gangrene, which meant amputation. Today's trench foot has different sources:

> Doctors call it immersion foot when a seaman's feet are bloated after long chilling in the sea water shipped by an open lifeboat.

>The airman's form of trench foot was reported last week in the Washington Star: flyers may develop swollen, whitish hands or faces which take months to get well if they whip off masks or gloves for a few moments to make fine adjustments at high altitudes. The accident happens so often that many U.S. doctors in England have made it their chief research.

Cold Cure. Whether the chill is caused by hours in cold water or minutes in freezing air, the treatment is to handle the injured flesh gently, keep it cold, sprinkle sulfanilamide on all raw spots, and very gradually bring temperature back to normal. In this way, Royal Canadian Navy surgeons made a fine record in treating 150 North Atlantic survivors exposed from 30 hours to 22 days: there were only seven amputations. In England, doctors keep the affected parts in cold water. The Canadians have evolved a refrigerating unit with leg openings like prisoners' stocks, so that a patient's body can be kept warm while cold air blows over his feet. Once when a unit broke down and the patient's feet got warm and painful, doctors found him dangling his feet out the window in the Canadian winter.

Misplaced good intentions may result in irreparable damage. The crew of an "internationally known ship" sunk in European waters were rescued by fishermen. The sympathetic rescuers massaged swollen feet briskly (breaking the weakened, almost-dead skin) and applied hot-water bottles (causing excruciating pain). Almost all the survivors had to have their feet amputated.

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