Moreover, the world-famous duPont Company, which has made powder and chemicals for all the nations, turned in and purchased the Harrison Chemical Works in 1917, and besides making "pigments" has entered the coal tar dye industry. The company made an intensive study of the dyeing industries—cotton, calico printing, wool, silk, leather, paper, paints, printing inks, &c., and made plans to meet the requirements of each. The Harrison plant is but one of the immense group operated by the duPont Company and it has been famous for the manufacture of white lead and acids.
A CHEMICAL DISCOVERY.
There is in fact no line in which the chemists of America did not rise to the emergency and the "romances of the industrial" world are not more entrancing than are those of the medical and other fields. Chemistry, for instance, discovered an antitoxin for the deadly gangrene, or gas bacillus, poisoning of the battlefields. The discovery was made by research workers in Rockefeller Institute.
It is one of the most important discoveries in medical research as applied to war, having an even greater bearing on the treatment of war wounds than the Dakin-Carrel treatment of sluicing wounds previously referred to. The serum works on the same principle as the anti-tetanus serum used to prevent lockjaw. The gangrene antitoxin is injected to prevent the development of gangrene poisoning.
The serum was developed by Dr. Carrel Bull and Miss Ida W. Pritchett, of the Rockefeller Institute, by immunizing horses by the application of the bacillus germs, then obtaining the resultant serum from the horses. The new serum displaces, in a measure, the Dakin-Carrel method of treating wounds. As soon as a soldier is picked up wounded, the plan is to give him an injection of the serum so that he can be rushed to the rear ambulances with no fear that the deadly gas infection will develop.
The use of the serum means the wiping out of the big death rate from infection, with death resulting merely from wounds that are in themselves fatal. The gas bacillus was discovered by Dr. William H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins University, 25 years ago. The bacillus frequently is present in soil and when carried to an open wound germinates quickly, developing into bubbles of gaseous matter, whence comes the name "gas bacillus." The bubbles multiply rapidly, a few hours often being sufficient to cause death.
A WOUND-FLUSHING SYSTEM.
Possible gangrene poisoning has been offset by the Dakin-Carrel system of constantly flushing the open wounds, but patients are frequently too far off to be given the advantage of the flushing method and this is where the serum is chiefly valuable. The ambulance or medical corps "shoots" the serum into the wounded soldier even before they douse his wound with iodine.
The progress that has been made along these lines is indicated by the statement of Lord Northcliffe, who after a visit to the front declared that the annual death rate in the English army was 3 per cent of 1000 and that the average illness, including colds and influenza, was less than in London, despite the discomforts of the trenches.
In the past disease has been as destructive as battles. Biology and pathology, to say nothing of surgery and therapeutics, have made such strides that disease has been virtually eliminated as a factor in warfare. War takes medical science into the field, where the control of large masses of men enables it to develop the highest efficiency.