Dr. Feelgood by Richard A. Lertzman, William J. Birnes Read Free Book Online

the Signal Corps, the only food that was readily available was turnips. People found them in bakery shops disguised as cakes and bread. Potatoes were luxuries, as were milk and butter. People who could afford it obtained heavily rationed items through the black market, but amid the wartime controls, both the seller and the buyer became liable to the risk of severe penalties. And public health was also an issue because black market meats were not inspected and raised the risk of trichinosis and other diseases.
    In 1917, when he was seventeen, Max graduated from Real Gymnasium, and was looking at the reality of being drafted into the army and sent to the trenches on the Western Front when he turned eighteen. Friends urged him to enlist as a library assistant at the front, which would preclude him from being drafted and land him a noncombat position, at least for the duration of the war. As he weighed this option, Max also had to deal with the news that both his older brothers, Heinz and Simon, had become war casualties—Heinz from a case of dysentery and Simon from shrapnel wounds.
    Max broached the idea of enlisting as a library assistant to his parents, but they rejected it out of hand. He was still seventeen and not yet an adult. However, his mother had an idea. She called Dr. Adler, her surgeon, who was the head of Pankow Hospital just outside of Berlin, and asked him if there was any position open for Max at the hospital. She told him that Max wanted to become a doctor and that serving as a medical assistant, especially during wartime, might further that aim. Dr. Adler said there was a great shortage of medical personnel and arranged an interview for Max.
    Working at the hospital was a revelation for Max. He got the job on the spot, working for Dr. Adler’s assistant surgeon and son-in-law, Dr. Lutz, and was assigned to clean instruments and disinfect the operating room. Max was even permitted to be among the attendants at operations and autopsies. It was a way for Max to learn basic anatomy and medical procedures, almost as if he were already a second- or third-year medical student. He even accompanied the doctors during their rounds, and he learned to take blood pressure and pulse, administer injections, and change wound dressings. Not only was Max exposed to the practice of medicine; he was also performing the duties of a hospital nurse.
    The lack of antibiotics in those days resulted in rampant infections in the surgical hospitals. For example, if an inflammation was discovered in the thin tissue of the inner lining of a patient’s (the peritoneum), during a basic abdominal surgery, there was little a surgeon could do to prevent peritonitis, a progressively painful condition that resulted not only from the wound itself but also from infection entering the wound. Max said that this was an all-too-common condition because of the filthy conditions on the battlefield and the time it took to move wounded soldiers from the front to the hospital. Surgeons could remove the bullets or shrapnel, but the inflammation and infection were usually the killers. As a result, the ironic expression, in those days as it is today, was “the operation went well, but the patient died.”
    The Pankow Hospital, like other surgical facilities across Germany, was inundated with war wounded and had transformed its specialty facilities to handle the triage and treatment of casualties. Max remembered that a wing of the hospital, which had been isolated because it was used for tuberculosis patients, was now transformed into a military hospital for the most severely injured soldiers. Drs. Adler and Lutz were the only surgeons in the hospital at that time and were required to treat both military as well as civilian patients. Because of the shortage of medical personnel, Dr. Adler’s own wife served as the operating room nurse, even while Dr. Adler himself had to cover the surgical service at two other Berlin hospitals.
    Max described the