Strictly speaking, this war with the Spaniards, if only in terms of the 6 battlefields of La Plata, the greatest problem for the people on the east coast is undoubtedly the problem of battlefield hygiene. According to statistics, as of today (September 15), the 6th Army on the East Coast has lost 392 people (excluding mercenaries and servant troops) in the battles in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Corrientes, Asunción and other places.

The reasons for the death of soldiers are varied, but they mainly cover several aspects: first, the harsh environment (many camping in the wilderness, and many swamps, heavy humidity); 2. Poor living conditions (tents, thatched huts); 3. Lack of a clean source of drinking water -- When marching in the field, you can only drink water from the water bladders you carry with you, and during the summer war, the sanitary condition of the water bladders is obviously very worrying. Especially before and after the attack and defense of Santa Fe, both the people on the east coast of the city and the Spaniards outside the city suffered a rare autumn epidemic, and more than 500 soldiers and civilians in Santa Fe died of this unexplained epidemic. In addition, dysentery, cholera, typhoid, beriberi, malaria, and other diseases have plagued the people of the East Coast from beginning to end, and the lack of medicines and treatment methods has led to the attrition of a large number of soldiers in non-combat units, for which the Military Medical Department of the Joint Staff Headquarters and the Ministry of Health have been severely criticized and condemned. Under such circumstances, the 6th Military Department and the Ministry of Health quickly set up a joint working group and sent people to Santa Fe, where the epidemic was most prevalent, to conduct research and try to find out the problem. At present, although the medical rescue system of the 6th Army on the east coast is still far from perfect, basically each company has two medical personnel and a field ambulance station.

But then again. In peacetime, when they were stationed at home, they had everything, the conditions were good, and the number of sick soldiers was small, so one company and two hygienists were almost enough. But now it is during the war, and a company of more than 200 people has two full-time hygienists responsible for cleaning, disinfecting, and bandaging the wounds of wounded soldiers. At the same time, they spend a lot of time caring for sick soldiers. Where can this be busy?

In general, the commanders of each company during the battle also had a certain number of Krandi servants for their hygienics, but these were only responsible for transporting the wounded from the front. I don't know anything else, I don't even know how to put bandages on people, what else is there to do!

On the other hand, the situation of the wounded who had been rushed back from the front line was not much better even though they were taken to the field hospital in the city by the medical personnel of the various companies. None of them. Lack of medical treatment, as well as a lack of professional surgical instruments and talents, caused many soldiers' wounds to continue to infect under such circumstances, and then developed a variety of complications. Faced with such a difficult situation, the Ministry of Health immediately sent 2o students from the surgical class of the Rio River Higher Medical College, which was still in the process of experimentation, to Buenos Aires, which is currently the only place in the rear where absolute safety is possible. There is not a single surgeon in the traversal, and it has taken so many years to explore and cultivate these twenty surgical "talents". In fact, they are talents who really exalt them, because all their medical knowledge comes from the only doctor in the crowd. That is, the ship doctor Wang Liao - a man with very suspicious medical skills. Therefore, their level can be imagined.

However, no matter how bad the level is, it is a doctor who has been trained for several years, and it is also a second knife that has been trained by a large number of Guarani people to do human anatomy, and it is not a big problem to do some simple surgery. Upon their arrival in Buenos Aires, they immediately set up a high-level field hospital. Specialized in receiving all types of wounded who require surgery.

The instruments they used to perform their operations were quite primitive, and some of the scalpels, forceps, tweezers, and so on made of special steel made from crucibles were of course of no better quality than those of later generations; Simple bandages, no surgical sutures, and only boiling water and alcohol for disinfection, which cannot prevent postoperative infection; The only painkiller was opium, which was specially approved by the state, and this "drug" had been strictly forbidden until then, but at this time, in order to meet the needs of the front-line war, it was not so much to care, so I first went to the field hospital to relieve the pain of the soldiers who needed surgery, and if the quantity was insufficient, I immediately asked the Dutch to increase the order.

After the establishment of this high-level field hospital, more than 800 wounded have been operated on, basically some simple surgeries, the success rate of the operation is still relatively high, reaching more than 7o%, but the probability of postoperative infection is also high, many soldiers have died after infection.

However, doctors at the Ministry of Health are also short of anti-infective drugs, and they are unable to produce high-magnification microscope lenses at the Henan Glass Factory, so they have never been able to start searching for and researching penicillin and other bactericidal substances. They had to disinfect surgical instruments, hemostatic bandages and gauze over and over again, while wiping the wound with alcohol to minimize the risk of infection.

And because many soldiers who need surgery are far away in Santa Fe, Corrientes and even Asunción, the distance is long and the transportation is inconvenient, and the number is relatively large (the front-line combat troops are dense, and the total strength of the servant army is more than 15,000 at the most, so there are many wounded and sick), so under the strong request of the 6th Military Department, three shipyards in China have started to build three hospital ships. These three hospital ships are divided into A, B and C, of which the first class transport ship is the highest, specializing in transporting the seriously injured and seriously ill patients, also known as hospital ships, equipped with surgeons and medical equipment, can perform surgeries; second-class hospital ships, equipped with professional nurses and simple medical equipment, which can provide a certain amount of care for the wounded and sick; Class C hospital ships are equipped with only temporary trained hygienists for the transport of the lightly wounded and the lightly ill.

At the beginning of the war, the 6th Military Department had just tentatively submitted a report on the construction of an ordinary medical transport ship (C-class ship), and it had not received much attention. However, after the war entered the stage of large-scale offensive and the climate in La Plata deteriorated, the appearance of a large number of wounded and sick made the 6th Army Department and the Executive Committee feel troublesome, after all, it was somewhat inappropriate and unprofessional to use ordinary ships to pull coal, ammunition, and food, so they immediately instructed the major shipbuilding enterprises to begin to study and design special medical transport ships. Today, a year after the outbreak of the war, the number of such medical ships has rapidly increased to three, and one of them is still a first-class medical transport ship for critically ill patients capable of performing operations, which has greatly promoted the progress of the medical cause of the East Coast Republic of China.

At the same time, for the first time, the technology of hanging bottle infusion was used on a large scale in the East Coast - and possibly on the planet. Large numbers of soldiers suffering from cholera, dysentery and colds were huddled in specially opened isolation wards, where they were professionally cared for by a large number of female nurses recruited from the homeland - also the first large-scale use of female nurses on the East Coast, as well as infusions.

To be honest, the infusion technology of hanging bottles is not high-tech, the principle is very simple, and the requirements for technology and materials are not very high: glass bottles are made of ready-made molds, infusion tubes are sewn from sterilized whale intestines, needles are specially hand-made (mechanical processing cannot achieve the required accuracy), and normal saline or something is better to mix.

Perhaps the only technical part of this treatment is how to find out exactly where the blood vessels are, and this can obviously be practiced with a lot of hands. After the use of hanging bottle infusion technology on a small scale and the successful recovery of some patients suffering from dysentery and cholera, it was immediately popularized among all health workers in the army. At the same time, the only two hospitals and dozens of health centers in China have also received notices and immediately sent people to Dongfang and Ping An hospitals to study in order to promote it throughout the country.

You must know that in the past, this kind of technology was only carried out in the small area of Dongfang County Hospital. At that time, due to the difficulty of needle processing and the selection of infusion tubes, it was delayed for several years, and it was almost at the beginning of last year that the actual infusion treatment of Guarani prisoners in the Changshan Forced Labor Camp began to be carried out because of the cholera outbreak here at that time, and many people died. The results were generally mixed, with infusion tubes sewn from whale intestines largely meeting the requirements for use, while hand-made needles were a bit of a barrier – thick needles made patients at greater risk of contracting germs. In addition, because needle injection is not easy to be reused, even if it is sterilized many times, it still cannot completely eliminate the threat of cross-infection.

However, although there are many problems, there is no time for the Ministry of Health to continue to improve, and the large number of sick officers and soldiers on the front line of the war cannot afford to wait. Therefore, with the endorsement of the military department, the Ministry of Health finally agreed to promote the unperfected hanging bottle infusion technology on a large scale on the front line. As for the resulting infections, side effects, and so on, that's all trivial, after all, you can't just watch the sick soldiers weaken day by day and remain indifferent.

Although the war was not a good thing, it clearly accelerated the popularization of some medical technology, institutions and equipment in the East Coast. For example, the Ministry of Health is studying blood group identification and blood transfusion technology, which is of great importance to the war, and the Dayuhe Higher Medical College under the Ministry of Health is currently conducting in-depth research, hoping to make a breakthrough in the near future.

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