Progress in surgery of limb's wounds during the Great War

The prominent tenets of limb's wound surgery have been improved during the Great War. Before 1914, traditional treatment of war injuries was usually applied on the ground because injuries caused by firearms were supposedly trivial while the threatening infection refrained surgeons from acting. From the very start of 1914, gangrene and septicaemia were the terrible consequences of new types of injuries provoked by shrapnel, all the more dangerous that the wounded men were numerous and the injuries were nursed after a too important delay. New surgical facilities have been organised by the French Military Health Service which created the "Ambulances Chirurgicales Automobiles", improved the selection procedures and the mobilization of many surgeons. New surgical treatments such as lancing, continuous use irrigation, delayed suture of wounds allowed improvement of results and saved more than one soldier. Finally, the excision of dead and contaminated tissues is still nowadays the most important progress in war surgery.