Polite Dissent

JSA #65 “Out of Time, Part 1″
Geoff Johns, writer
Don Kramer, penciler

The original Hourman, the android Hourman, Dr. Mid-Nite, and other members of the JSA travel to the Timepoint to repair the wounds Rick Tyler (the current Hourman) suffered during the invasion of Khandaq (Hawkman #24)

Dr. Mid-Nite: His abdominal muscles are severed, his peritoneum cut clean through the viscera

In regular English, what Dr. Mid-Nite is saying is that the sword cut through the muscles overlying Rick’s abdomen and then sliced open his abdominal cavity injuring his stomach, intestines, and spleen.

Dr. Mid-Nite: I’m going to fuse the major laceration across the stomach with an electrical current then stitch it up.

Electical current can be used in surgery to cut incisions or to cauterize wounds, but it has no use in fusing tissue together. Plus, if you’re going to fuse the wound, why does it need to be sewn up afterwards? I suspect Dr. Mid-Nite means that he is going to use an electrical current to cauterize the bleeding edges of the laceration and then stitch them together by hand.

Dr. Mid-Nite: High-intensity focused ultrasound generator. Capable of creating heat at a rate of seventy degrees centigrade in less than a second.

This is an actual technology that is currently being investigated, particularly by the military. It allows deep wounds to be cauterized without surgery. The ultrasound can first be used to locate the bleeding and then to stop it.
Seventy degrees centigrade (174? F) is not hot enough to cauterize a wound. The minimum required temperature is 100? C (212? F), though some electro-cautery machines are capable of generating heat of more than two-thousand degrees F.

Other concerns:

1. Time
   49 minutes and 42 seconds to repair a severe abdominal trauma? That’s really pushing it, but then this is Dr. Mid-Nite: surgeon-extraordinaire.
2. Anesthesia
   It doesn’t appear that any anesthesia is being used. Using some anesthesia would be a very good idea because it would relax Rick and reduce his pain. This would help stabilize his blood pressure and other vital signs. It would also stop him from moving during surgery (“Now, I’m going to sew the stomach back together and…wha? I’ve sewn his pancreas to his bladder? Dammit Rick, hold still!”)
3. Stitches
   Hourman’s miraculous speeded-up-time healing technique somehow even managed to remove Rick’s stitches. You can see where they used to be on his abdomen, but they’ve miraculously disappeared (and before you ask, absorbable sutures are used for stitches inside the body, not outside).
4. Dirt
   Traumatic abdominal surgery is one of the nastiest and dirtiest surgeries there is. The stomach and intestinal contents have spilled into the abdominal cavity. The digestive acids will cause severe inflammation, while the semi-digested food and other intestinal contents are a set-up for a particularly nasty infection. Strong antibiotics and generous cleaning of the abdominal cavity are key (but not mentioned here at all).