A city whose hospitals and physicians are renowned for research and cutting-edge surgical innovations faced a starkly different challenge Monday, treating scores of injuries more commonly found in a war zone. Patients arrived at Boston hospitals with limbs blown off, shrapnel wounds, burns, gruesome fractures, and perforated eardrums from the shock wave of two explosions near the ¬Boston Marathon finish line shortly before 3 p.m. "For many, many people in emergency medicine who are practicing domestically and not in the military, these are once-in-a-lifetime events," said Dr. Ron Walls, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
