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MISS EDITH STONEY AND DR. FLORENCE STONEY
Miss Edith Stoney and her sister, Dr. Florence Stoney, are specialists in X-ray work, and in this vitally important branch of surgery they have both rendered fine service throughout the war.
Dr. Stoney was head of the electrical department in the New Hospital for Women, London. Early in the war she went to Antwerp in Mrs. St. Clair Stobart’s unit as head of the medical staff and in charge of the X-ray department. After the fall of Antwerp, when the hospital staff made their escape in London motor-buses only twenty minutes before the bridge of boats was blown up, the unit was re-established in a hospital at Cherbourg under the French Croix Rouge. The X-ray work was of course invaluable, and in giving an account of it Dr. Stoney wrote:
“Most of our cases were septic fractures, for nearly all were septic by the time they reached us, four to eight days generally after being wounded, and most of the fractures were badly comminuted as well. The X-rays were much in request to show the exact condition of the part and the position of the fragments. In all cases the pieces of the shell had to be accurately located, and were then as a rule easily extracted.”
With constant practice it became possible for Dr. Stoney to tell by X-rays which were the dead pieces of bone in a comminuted fracture, for observation showed that they threw a denser shadow than living bone. “One piece of dead bone three inches long was diagnosed first by X-rays,” Dr. Stoney reports, “and the early removal of these pieces greatly hastens recovery.”
When the hospital was inspected by the consulting surgeon for the district, his first inclination was to regard a hospital staffed by women as hardly worthy of inspection; but after going through the wards he wrote:
“L’hôpital de Tourlaville est très bien organisé, les malades sont très bien soignés, et les chirurgiennes sont de valeur égale aux chirurgiens les meilleurs.”
When the British army took over the northern part of the line in France, hospital arrangements were altered. The need for the Cherbourg hospital was over, as all British movable cases were taken to England; and therefore in the spring of 1915 the hospital was closed. Dr. Stoney returned to England, and offered her services to the War Office, and in April, 1915, she was asked to take over the X-ray department in the Fulham Military Hospital, a hospital of over 1000 beds, where she is still working.
Dr. Stoney took up this work about a fortnight before the opening of the Endell Street Hospital under Dr. Garrett Anderson; she is therefore the first woman doctor to work under the War Office in England. Dr. Stoney not only undertakes the photographic branch of the X-ray work, but she diagnoses and reports on the cases from the photographs. Another branch of her work is to use X-rays actually during operations for those surgeons who prefer to operate in this way. She also started a small department for X-ray treatment, which has proved beneficial in certain nerve and goitre cases.