War Doctor Surgery on the Front Line:

by David Nott

Is the practice of medicine a business or is it a vocation? Where does the balance lie between doing well and doing good?

Start on clavicle. Remove middle third. Control and divide subsc art and vein. Divide large nerve trunks around these as prox as poses. Then come onto chest wall immed anterior and divide Pec maj origin from remaining clav. Divide pec minor insertion and (very imp) divide origin and get deep to serrates anterior. Your hand sweeps behind scapula. Divide all muscles attached to scapula. Stop muscle bleeding with count suture. Easy! Good luck. Meirion

so specialized, in fact, that I feared surgeons would no longer be able to do humanitarian work. They simply wouldn’t have the array of skills necessary to treat the full gamut of injuries a single war surgeon would see in the field.