Chapter XXVIII: A Simple Matter

I DO NOT WISH TO BORE YOU with a recitation of my work, but there is another case that I thought was quite remarkable. It was about a four-year-old girl whom I had brought into the world. At Christmas time, she was playing with a sparkler, and her dress caught fire about the waist line on the right side. Before the fire could be extinguished, it had run up her side, clear to the arm pit, producing first- and second-degree burns on her side and third-degree burns on the anterior and posterior folds of the arm pit.

I treated the burns with all that we knew at the time, and got them healed without infection. However, the third-degree burns led to marked scarring of the tissue around the folds of the arm pit, with the result that contraction of the scars gradually pulled her arm so tightly to her side that when her mother brought her back to me three months later, she told me that the only way her daughter could wash the arm pit was to wrap some gauze around a kitchen knife, wet it with soapy water and slide that back and forth through the pit. The mother wanted to know what to do.

I told her that local applications would have no effect upon the scars, but that surgery might give some relief. She took the child to Dr. Cowden, and he told her that it would be a simple matter. He would sever the scar tissue and place the arm in an airplane splint at right angles to the body as the wounds healed. The theory was alright, but the result was a dismal failure.

When the incisions showed no inclination to heal after three more months, Dr. Cowden told the mother to take the arm off the splint. Three months after that, the mother brought her child back to me, and the arm was tighter against her side than before. She was begging for help.

I had seen an article somewhere that discussed passing galvanic current through 5% salt solution to soften scar tissue. Unfortunately, I never read the article and did not know the technique at all, but I thought I had enough common sense to work out my own.

I told the mother that, if she would bring the child to me as often as I wished and for as long as I wished, then I would do all that I could to help her. I told her there would be no charge, as it was purely experimental with me. I gave no assurances that it would improve the condition. All I could promise was that the treatments would bring no pain to her daughter and do her no further harm.

On that basis I was to enter into uncharted waters. I thought I knew enough about ionization to get by with it. I began giving treatments twice a week. By the end of six weeks, there had been such definite improvement that I changed to weekly treatments. In two more months, the improvement was so dramatic that the child could raise the arm to about 75% of the distance to perpendicular. I then told the mother that I would discontinue treatment, but she was to bring the child back immediately if she saw any indication of the scar seeming to draw the arm down again.

Three months later, I happened to be in the neighborhood of the little girl's home on a call and decided to drive by and see how she was getting along. Her mother said, "She's out in the orchard skinning the cat with the other children. Go out and see for yourself."

There she was, hanging from a limb, with both arms absolutely parallel beside her head. Now, 55 years later, the function of her right arm is 100%.


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