War Diaries Talk

General Maynard

  • erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be by erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be

    What's wrong with Gen. Maynard? E..... of the head. He gets anti strep serum. By the way, for sick or wounded soldiers cared for by a field ambulance, do I tag as reason "other"?

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    I can't make out what is wrong with the general, but it seems to be an infection of some kind since he was given anti-strep serum. I tried searching for several possibilities of the name of his condition, but couldn't come up with anything. I did find an article from about 1897 that described several cases where anti-strep serum was used for infections other than strep.

    For tagging soldiers cared for by the field ambulance, if you have the name, you should tag them as "sick or wounded" and add their unit in the bottom line of the Person tag, if it's available. So for Gen. Maynard, you would type in 13th Inf. Bde.

    Posted

  • bje by bje

    Erysipelas? A bacterial skin infection

    Posted

  • Stork by Stork in response to bje's comment.

    You got it- from WordWeb: "An acute streptococcal infection characterized by deep-red inflammation of the skin and mucous membranes." That explains the anti-Strept serum. Now I'm curious about the words in the quotation marks- it looks like 'July var.' 'Var' may be variation, but I can't find anything about July variation on the web.

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  • erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be by erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be

    Could it be polyvar?

    Posted

  • marie.eklidvirginmedia.com by marie.eklidvirginmedia.com

    Whatever it as he was suffering from in his head, or being treated with, he may have been in isolation because it says Special MO and Orderlies detailed to attend him, and not to go near other patients.

    Posted

  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    Good work, everybody!

    I think erysipelas is probably it, and also polyvar, although I admit I'm having trouble putting polyvar in context. On the web, it seems to be either a brand or a type of microscope, but what I find is all modern. I can't seem to figure out what to type into Google to get a use for the term in 1915.

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    I'm not sure if it's polyvar or if stork was right and it's 'july var' . I'm no expert, but I wonder if it refers to a batch of the serum. Certainly nowadays they regularly update flu vaccines and things like that, so possibly this was something similar.

    Very happy to be corrected by somebody with more medical know-how though!

    Posted