Triage

If we are to survive in a world gone stark, raving mad, we must sort out our priorities and put them in proper order.

The word triage is of French origin and derives from the word “trier,” meaning to sift, to sort out. It came into prominence during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 when battle casualties were tremendous and the French army medics were hard put in their limited efforts and resources to try to save what they could of the overwhelming number of wounded and dying on the battlefield. Since it was completely impossible to save all the wounded, rather than pursue an ineffective response of flailing out in a chaotic manner of confused desperation, they had to make some hard decisions. For one thing, they had to decide on whom they could still save, and whom it would be an exercise in futility and a waste of their precious time and resources to try to save. The hopeless and impossible cases were left to die.

It was not a novel situation. Although the word triage is probably not generally known, the same situation has occurred in a countless number of occasions throughout history. Anyone who has read Gone With the Wind or seen the movie, will undoubtedly remember the terrible scenes that resulted from the Battle of Atlanta during the Civil War. One such scene depicts thousands of wounded and dying soldiers lying at random on the railroad yards and tracks of the Atlanta station. An exhausted medical physician by the name of Dr. Meade and a few assistants were up to their elbows in blood and stench trying to save those whom they could, and leaving large numbers of others, who were more or less hopeless, to their fate. They, too, had to make decisions – whom could they perhaps save, who were beyond help, and, in short, how could they best utilize their limited resources to save those they could. These doctors, too, were following the principles of triage. They, too, were forced to make hard and ruthless decisions of sorting out the possible from the pointless and do the best they could with what they had. They had to make up their minds as to what their priorities were.

Let me illustrate one more example. When the then super ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912, its sinking caused the loss of 1,517 lives, according to a Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia. Because of indiscretion and unpreparedness, when the disaster was upon them, the crew (and some of the passengers), too, had to make some hard and ruthless decisions, and they had to ma ...

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