Date Posted:Mon, March 04 2024, 6:28:30 Author:kgp Subject: QOTD for Monday, March 4, 2024
The following quotation is from Written in My Own Heart’s Blood by Diana Gabaldon. Copyright 2014 All Rights Reserved. Chapter 75 The Cider Orchard
I don’t know when physicians began calling it “the Golden Hour,” but surely every battlefield medic from the time of the Iliad onward knows about it. From the time of an accident or injury that isn’t immediately fatal, the victim’s chances of living are best if he receives treatment within an hour of sustaining the injury. After that, shock, continual loss of blood, debility due to pain . . . the chance of saving a patient goes sharply downhill.
Add in blazing temperatures, lack of water, and the stress of running full out through fields and woods, wearing wool homespun and carrying heavy weapons, inhaling powder smoke, and trying either to kill someone or avoid being killed, just prior to being injured, and I rather thought we were looking at a Golden fifteen minutes or so.
Given also the fact that the wounded were having to be carried or to walk - probably more than a mile - to a place where they could find assistance . . . I supposed we were doing well to save as many as we were. If only temporarily, I added grimly to myself, hearing the screaming from inside the church.
kgp