Shortly after entering the army as a private, Perrin was given a letter of introduction to a medical major in regard to his being transferred to that department. "Nearly all surgical cases require certain active or passive motions which the surgeon might like carried out and I would be well qualified to see that his instructions were obeyed," Perrin said. But Perrin faced derision from his superior officer, who informed him that "the trouble with osteopaths is that they overstep their instructions."
He soon proved himself, however, by working with post-operative pneumonia cases. "The night nurse came to me I went off duty and said, 'Wilson, we are going to lose that case tonight.' I was rather busy at the time, but on general principles I said, 'Oh, no, we don't lose those cases.' A little later she asked if I would stay and help out on the case. Permission was obtained on the ground that a more experienced orderly was necessary at night, there being no intimation that I was going to work on the case. When I first started I found a very thready pulse and the chart reading of 104 temperature, 140 pulse and 42 respiration. The patient was not delirious but had sinking spells which he described as periods of conscious unconsciousness. I very light sprung the ribs over the consolidated area, worked out the spinal area at the fourth dorsal and held the chest over the heart in the position of forced inspiration for a few minutes. His condition was so weak that I did not work more than ten minutes. Four hours later the readings were T.103, P.120, R.28, a most satisfactory recovery by lysis followed. The nurse said she had never seen anything like it in her life. To which I replied that there were several thousand osteopaths doing similar work everyday (Osteopathy in Medical Service in the War." Wilson, P.T. AOA Journal, June 1920).
Dr. Perrin served overseas July 10, 1918, to July 4, 1919. More stories of his service during World War I are below:
For more information about osteopaths in the war, visit the Harold H. Magoun and Bradley Downing collections. All images are courtesy of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine.
