FALSE ARMS FOR WORK.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 24 October 1916, Page 2

FALSE ARMS FOR WORK.

Even more wonderful than the legs are the artificial arms, for whereas the leg movement is automatic and comparatively simple, the movements of an arm are voluntarily and complex. Very great improvement has been made in arms and hands at the workshops in Roehampton House, and men supplied with them are here to be seen hammering, filing, sawing, and doing a great variety of work. Of course the efficiency of an arm or hand depends upon the amount of the natural limb that is left, but every arm is more or less useful, and a great advance on the iron hook with which soldiers in former wars had to be satisfied.

I have not space for describing their structure, but the chief point is that the arm can be bent at the elbow by the action of the shoulder muscles, and it can be locked at any desired angle by ingenious mechanism so that a worker may use it for hours without suffering fatigue of the shoulder muscles. A gloved hand is screwed into the lower end, and as the hand, is jointed it can be bent so as to pick up objects and hold them. Thus a . man may carry a stick or an umbrella, or hold a book, etc.

A great variety of instruments are to be seen, any of which can be screwed into the arm, and also a clamp for holding a cricket bat, a billiard cue, a hammer, axe, chopper, etc. Knives and forks can be quite expertly used, and there is one man at the hospital who can write a legible hand. An artificially armed l officer, by the way is the best billiards player : in the neighbouring building, Dover House, where officers undergo the same repains as the men at Roehampton House.