Artificial Limba

Horowhenua Chronicle, 24 October 1916, Page 2

Artificial Limba

•i placo ini-England is the Queen Mary Convalescent Hospital at ißoehampton, where limbless soldiiere and sailors are being fitted with artificial arms and legs, hands- and feet says the medical correspondent of an English paper. I expected to find there a depressing spectacle of helpless men, dejected and despondent. To my surprise I was met with a bright and busy scene everyone active, happy, hopeful ; andi happiest and most hopeful of all were them radiant with delight at being able to get about once more.

"Look at that man," said my guide, pointing to a soldier who was briskly walking up and down between a length of paralloll bare. ''How long do you think he ha« a been on artificial legs?" "A month," I hasarded: ".Five minutes," said the hospital official. Exercising between . the paralled- bars, the patient learns balanoe and the control of his new legs; next he moves about with. the help of two sticks; then, discarding theee aids, he walks with nearly all the ease ami, confidence of people on their natural legs. Here are men at every stage of this progress from helplessness to activity, some beginning dome ready to leave the institution. WALKING IN A WEEK. ' Show us how you can march," saidi my guide to a fine, yoling-. fellow who looked anything but a wounded and crippled soldier. , ;]>own the room ho atridee at n rattling pace,-turns quickly and easily, c.mes backhand stands at ease. Both legs are artificial; ho has been on them only, a week or ten days, but lie waltcs so well and looks so nealthy that it will not be surprising if, when he goes out into the world, someone asks him why he is notatthe war.

Perhaps to the eye of an expert surgeon there may have appeared* a little stiffness and awkwardness, but what surprised me was the length iind freedom of the mended soldier's stride. "It comes easier to take 'a long step," lie explained, and the matron added that in a little time he would walk still better. It takes about nine 'months to become really comfortable on artificial limbs.

A soldier istandiing beside me seemed so well and sound that I woundered why lie was not at the front. It turned out that he had been badly wounded and had lost a leg, but was now 6o active on his artificial limb that he had become an orderly at Roehampton House. But the most marvellous case is that of a man who had a leg completely removed from the bodiy. No stump being left it would, up till quite recently, have been impracticable to fit .an artificial limb. But in' this case and another of the same kind, an ingenious limb-maker moulded a mass of leather to the lower part of the body and formed an artificial stump to take the artificial leg. This patient, who would formerly have been doomed to a lifelong helplessness, now walks with the be6t of his comrades; without the r least apparent difficulty he sat on a chair and stood up again with the alertness of a man on his natural legs.

A dozen men marched round the room , and with the moat critical inspection I could not tell which was the artificial leg or whether both were artificial.