Splints, of which an immense number were necessary even for the very short period in which we were actually engaged in the conduct of the war, formed a real Red Cross specialty. Our army hospitals were entirely dependent upon the American Red Cross for these necessities--the total orders for which in July and August of 1918, totaled some 15,000 to 20,000 weekly. For that entire year the output was 94,583 splints, the factories often working from eighteen to twenty hours a day to keep pace with the requisitions upon them. Our Red Cross also supplied all the nitrous oxide used in American hospitals of every type in France. The use of this ultra-modern anæsthetic, to the increasing exclusion of ether and of chloroform, forms one of the fascinating chapters of the medical conduct of the war. Although it had been employed as an anæsthetic in the United States for a number of years before the beginning of the war, its first use in Europe was when Colonel George W. Crile--the distinguished surgeon from Cleveland, Ohio--introduced it into operations in the then American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly--afterward the American Red Cross Military Hospital Number One. That was in 1915. Nitrous oxide as an anæsthetic immediately attracted the attention of a number of eminent British surgeons. "It is good," said Colonel Crile, tersely. And so it is--good. It is so good that Colonel Alexander Lambert, at that time chief surgeon of our American Red Cross, immediately made it the standard anæsthetic of its medical service. For, like so many other American surgeons, he quickly concurred in the opinion that nitrous acid, used in combination with oxygen, three parts to one, is the least dangerous as well as the best adapted for use when operating upon cases of chest surgery, abdomen wounds, or of shock. Under this anæsthetic the percentage of recovery is seventy-two per cent, as compared with fifty per cent for either chloroform or ether. Moreover, it has none of the disagreeable after effects which come almost invariably with the use of chloroform or ether. To quote Colonel Lambert: "The use of nitrous-oxide anæsthetic to the exclusion of ether or chloroform in case of at least the seriously wounded seems to me not only advisable but beyond the advisability of discussion." Its official use, therefore, was predicated. It was first supplied to the casualty-clearing stations; American and British coöperating for the sake of an exchange of ideas as to its best use. Our Red Cross supplied an apparatus of special design that had gradually been evolved from those already devised. This allowed the separate administration of the nitrous oxide, of oxygen, or of ether--which at times was used in small quantities--or of the three in various combinations. And all our American nurses were trained as anæsthetists in its use. * * * * *