GENERAL INTRODUCTION THE infinite variety of injuries which any war presents to the surgeon gives to military surgery a special interest and importance. The special interest and importance, in a surgical sense, of the great European War lies not so much in the fact that examples of every form of gross lesion of organs and limbs have been seen, for if we read the older writers rve find little in the moderns that is new in this respect, but is to be found in the enormous mass of clinical material which has been presented to us and in the production of evidence sufficient to eliminate sources of error in determining important conclusions. For the first time also in any campaign the labours of the surgeon and thc physician have had the aid of the bacteriologist, the pathoIogist, the physiologist and indeed of every form of scientific assistance in the solution of their respective problems. The clinician entered upon the great war armed with all thc re- sources which the advances of fifty...