And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
(Matthew 4:23, KJV)
About 10:00 a.m. one morning, a truck stopped in front of Mindanao Sanitarium and Hospital in the Philippines, and an 18-year-old boy was carried in on a door, used as a make-shift stretcher. The upper end of his right femur was sticking our of his pants and pointing upward.
He had fallen out of a mango tree, under which a water buffalo was tied. The upper end of the broken femur gouged deeply into the mud where the buffalo had stood. To attend to him were Mrs. Peter Donton, the anesthetist. Dr Arturo Lasta, and me. Fortunately, the men who brought him in had not attempted to put the protruding bone back in place.
After cutting off his clothes, Dr Lasta and I began to clean the bone and remove the mud from the marrow cavity. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. We did not use any antiseptic, only saline and cotton applicators. He then received the anesthetic, as we put the bone back in the flesh.
We covered the bone over with a little muscle, so it would not be exposed to air, and made the wound a bit wider. We did not suture the wound, but put him in a Balkan frame in traction. We followed the course with x-rays and after two weeks Dr. Lasta did a wound closure. The Lord blessed the treatment.
Six weeks later, he walked out of the hospital on his own, without crutches! Once more, we experienced the Lord’s healing and blessing.
– Wills G. Dick, LLUSM class of 1941