WHY WE CALL THEM HUNS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 173, 16 April 1919, Page 7

WHY WE CALL THEM HUNS

GERMAN SURGEONS' CRIMES

WANTON OPERATIONS ON OUR MEN

German doctors and medical professors during the war performed on British wounded prisoners experimental operations of a peculiarly wanton and heartless character (says the "Daily Mail"). To that opinion more than one British medical officer has come,. after working on cases of men who have recently bsen sent home.from Germany. "Some of the things the German medical men have done to our poor fellows," said a medical officer in Fulham military hospital, "the most hardened experimenter would not have been so uselessly and inhumanly cruel as to have tried on a dog or other dumb animal. "Men who have been sent back to London hospitals from Germany lately have in several instances been helpless victims of malpractice so apparent, and indisputable that even the most lenient medical observer could not attribute the shockins state of some of the men to negligence or ignorance on the part of the Hun doctors." Three British soldiers who were wounded prisoners in German hospitals have died at Fulham military hospital recently. The last case of a repatriated foldier, brought home when it was too late to save him-from the Hun brutality that caused his death, was Private Vardar. of tl\!> Northants Regiment, who was said in the Coroner's Court,to have pnlH-d at 12st. and to have come homo weighing but ist.

A Fiendish Case. "I can. show you instances in this hospital," said a surgeon at Fulham, "where intentional neglect or futile oper-ations-an operation that never had a chance-can be proven by the victims and the condition in which they were sent back. "A case of wanton experiment was that of a sapper in the Royal Engineers named Eoberts. • He was wounded on March 23 last at I* Transloy and lay for some time in a shell-hole unobserved. There ho made the first dressing a wound in his wrist. Taken eventually to Mons Hospital, British doctors who were fellow-prisoners amputated his right hand at the wrist. "Subsequently the. Germans removed him to another hospital at Mons, where a German medical professor tried experiments on Roberts's arm. Tho German slit tho stump and tried to make the two ends of the bone of the forearm into two fingers of weird and terrible appearance. This not proving successful— which was natural, considering the muscles that govern the lower and upper arm—a piece of flesh was cut from Roberts\= abdomen mid an attempt made to graft it on to tho mutilated stump so as to form a sort of third finger. This bit of . flesh containing neither bone nor muscle, tho operation was, as might have been expected, an absolute failure. "Roberts has been sent home in very bad shape, and what might havo been a useful stump <jf .his right forearm has been rendered useless by German expert, ments. "Private Brown, of the fyist Yorkshire Regiment, is another inmate of this hospital who is a sample of German malpractice. He .was wounded and taken prisoner in September last when in front of his line cutting German wire. A piece of shrapnel entered his left thigh and broke the large bone of the leg. Reaching Tourcoing, an operation was performed by a German surgeon. "When the femur, or large bone of the leg, has been broken, as Brown's had been, weights must lie put on the leg, for otherwise the muscles would persistently draw the lower piece of the bone upwards and forco the upper piece outwards. This continual upward pull of the muscle would, unless weights were applied, draw the upper piece of bone outward until it assumed a position almost at right angles to its normal position; in other words, it would be horizontal instead of perpendicular. •

Deliberate Leg-Shortening. "Two weeks after I lie operation Brown was removed to another German hospital where all weights wore removed from the wounded leg and a metal and wiro splint was put on. The released muscles immediately began to pull the upper niece of the fractured bone out of place. Day by day the bone was drawn upwards, and day by day Brown's leg shortened.

"That this was seen and known by the German doctors was shown by the fact that thev daily bent the metal splint on the leg to fit the shortening limb. Abscesses formed, and lepealcd operations followed. When Brown was repatriated and brought to this hospital on December 27 his wound was in a very septic condition.- and his wounded leg was !)J inches shorter than the other leg.

"An X-rays picture of the bone showed the upper part sticking out horizontal lv from the pelvic bone and tho lower portion leading down at an acuto angle from tho upper .one. Subsequently the bone had to be cut and tho upper part pulled down. This was done, and therein- Gin. in length added lo tho wounded leg. Brown had been in such dreadful condition for so long that' whether or not ho will recover is hard to say. "A vorv similar case wns that of Private Slevin, of the Connaught Rangers, another inmate of Fulham military hospital. He was wounded on October 10 last, and lav in the open for fourteen hours in front of Le Gateau. A shell hud fractured the large bone in his thigh, much as Brown's bone had been fractured.

"Slfivan was treated in tho German dressing station, tho Germans putting his leg in a plaster cast. He suffered terribly by what ho thought was a sequence of operations, but what very likely may have been a series of re-dressings. It was not v.ulil weeks after, when Slevin reached the hospital at Cologne, that the cast was taken from his leg and weights were applied to keep the muscles from pulling tho bone out of place. It was then too late. The contracting muscles had drawn the bone so much out of place that Slevin Vies.' was six inches shorter than it should have been. An X-rays photograph of his leg showed the bone at the point of fracture at an acuto angle like the bone in Brown's leg. "The malpractico of removing the weights from Brown's leg and of not immediately applying them to Slevin's leg must have been due to one of two things: Either the German medical authority wilfully removed tho weights from Brown's leg or failed to apply them to Slevin's leg with the idea of making these men permanent cripples'; or some sort of experiment was bei'.ig tried in connection with the metal and wiro splint on Brown's leg, which the doctors changed every day, or in connection with the plaster of Paris treatment of Slevin's leg. "Whether from a medical standpoint one considers these tilings wanton experiment or careless malpractice, a doctor who has worked on these cases returned Troai German hospitals cannot but wish that tho public could see some of the results of German surgery and understand that it has ken applied to thousands of our wounded men who have died in German hospitals, whose experiences and sufferings wo will never know."