A Desperate Call for Skin Grafts
After a lamp explosion leaves a Walla Walla woman severely burned, the community is urged to donate skin to save her life.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Eight weeks ago, Mrs. William Nave of Walla Walla had one-fourth of her skin destroyed by being burned by a lamp explosion, and has suffered torture ever since. An appeal for skin to graft has been answered by over a dozen persons, among them being the sister superior of St. Mary's hospital, the Misses Keytar, McCorquodale and Bean and Mrs. Pelleriver, nurses at the hospital, and Barney Knagg, who alone has given sixteen pieces of cuticle. At present but one-tenth enough skin has been furnished, and unless the second appeal is generously responded to, the woman will die. The present operation is the largest of the kind ever attempted in the Northwest and the physicians say it will require at least two weeks to cover the burned surface if the donations of cuticle are made.
“Unless the second appeal is generously responded to, the woman will die.”
This harrowing account of a 1904 medical crisis highlights the pre-synthetic era of medicine, where life-saving ‘grafts’ relied entirely on the communal sacrifice of healthy skin from neighbors and hospital staff. It serves as a stark reminder of the extreme measures required to treat industrial-age domestic accidents.
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