THE IODINE TREATMENT OF WOUNDS.
[TO THR EDITOR Or THE " SPRDTAT011-1 Srn,—In your issue of December 12th appears a letter under the title " A Coincidence P " in which the writer claims that the thanks of the Army for the recent adoption of iodine as a first dressing in the field are chiefly due to the Spectator and its correspondent " F. H. C.-D.," whose letter in the issue of November 14th describes a system of iodine treatment of wounds in use in the French Army. No doubt many helper. are necessary in order to stir up a great Department of State like the War Office-to alter its routine arrangements, yet, in justice to Miss Lois Thoday, the matron of the nursing home at 4-5 Dorset Square, it is necessary to state that she anticipated your correspondent by five and a half weeks in calling the attention of the War Office to the desirability of using iodine as a first dressing for the troops in the field. On October 6th Miss Thoday wrote a letter to the War Office making this suggestion, which was acknowledged on October 10th. On October 12th she wrote again, offering to organize a fund for providing iodine in bottles for the soldiers to carry, the War Office in reply refusing the offer on the ground that adequate provision had been made for the treatment of the sick and wounded. Not to be thus deterred, however, Miss Thoday, with the help of an influential Committee, had sent off a large number of cases of iodine in small bottles for the soldiers in France. Meanwhile the War Office has also become converted to the usefulness of this first dressing for wounds, and towards the end of Novem- ber Mr. Tennant announced in Parliament that small bottles of iodine solution were being provided for every soldier at the
front.—I am, Sir, &c., W. H. [Miss Thoday is to be congratulated on her persistence as well as her prescience. Her primacy would seem also to be beyond doubt.—ED. Spectator.]
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