REMARKABLE SURGERY

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2534, 7 August 1915, Page 3

REMARKABLE SURGERY

' * — : — IN 'A GERMAN WAR. HOSPITAL. The great use that is being made of artillery in this war, and particularly of high explosive shells, has resulted in injuries of an appalling nature being inflicted on some of the mon hit by sholls. Some of these wounds present new problems to surgery. A citizen of a neutral country, writing in the "Daily Mail" of a 1 visit to the hospital of Professor Christian Bruhn, at Dusseldorf (Germany), where some remarkable surgical operations havo heen performed on wounded soldiers, states^ — "I went through the hospital recently. • Those patients who were able were 'at attention' —as well as 'attention' could be done—in their clean,, bluestriped hospital suits. Flowers from tho fields 6tood on'tlio tables between tho beds beside littlo trinkets, these, as well as the flowers, being presents from friends, and the. nurses went quietly to and fro, doing their good work. "I looked upon a tall, light-haired man, with half a face, the other half having been torn away by a piece of shell. Tho mouth was nearly closed, and when I asked him a question he stuttered and answered with great difficulty. His Tight eye was still intact. I asked him if he was still able to read, but he answered .'No,' and tho tears came. He himself eamo from tlio Carpathian Mountains. When he 'arrived at tho hospital he had practically no face. But the doctors had taken pieces of skin from his back, and laid them on thoso parts of tho face that were gone.' And the pieces, of bone which liad been blown away wero replaced by silver substitutes. "Ho looks splendid now," said the professor, and patted tho patient's shoulder, and the poor fellow tried to smile. Id one bed lay a young Bavarian. He smiled a bright smilo and put out a largo hand. On the bedstead hung tho Iron Cross and tho Bavarian medal for bravery. . "I feel fine, thank you," he said. "And I have not been in much painhardly anv. A fortnight ago I was at the front "in Flanders, and in a short while I'am going hack there again. Tho worst period" was before tho ambulance men found me o.n tho battlefield. Six dead comrades lay on top of me, and' I was too weak to push them away. And when I mov.ea my head the faces of tho dead ones touched mine. It was horrible to lio in such a position for twenty-four hours. But then I have got those," ho said; and pointed to his medals. "Look hero," said the professor, and shewed me a young Englishman. "He came hero with tlio whole lower' part of tho faco shot away, almost from car to car. I took out pieces of his shiuthom: tho softer parts and the gums aro of rubber. Tho skin is takon from his own back. Tlio only pity is that he will never be ablo to grow a beard again." "I used always to be clean .shaven, anyhow," said the Englishman, - and smjled. ■ i