MODERN MIRACLE.

Mt Benger Mail, 19 October 1938, Page 4

MODERN MIRACLE.

WORK OF SURGEONS. GIRL GIVEN NEW FACE. Hazel Crickmer, aged four, of Eastcote, Middlesex, will be a beautiful girl by the time she is 15. Yet she >vas born with a terrible disfigurement. S. mole, S' birth-mark, covered one-half >f her face and stretched across the top i>f one eye and the bridge of her nose. When Hazel was only six months old her mother took her to Westminster Hospital in London every week for 18 months for radium treatment. “I felt so dreadful about it,” she told a Sunday Express representative, "that I used to hide Hazel’s face and let trains go by until I could find an empty carriage.” Then prominent surgeons decided to operate. Unless we remove the mole, they said, Hazel will never be able to go to school, when she grows up she will have no chance is the labour mar-

ket, and she will have no hope of love and marriage like other girls. GREAT COURAGE. So on January 25, 1937, Hazel was admitted to the hospital, and the work began. First the part of the mole on her nose was cut away and fresh skin grafted there from her thigh. In August Hazel went back for three months more, while a doublegraft was performed. The surgeons cut away the mole which stretched from forehead to chin. Then they sewed Hazel’s right wrist to her body to allow fresh skin to grow. Hazel, a real heroine, never complained. When layers of fresh skin had grown they were grafted on to her face. Then her wrist was brought up and sewn to the side of her face for more healthy skin to grow into place. Hazel went away to convalescence but came back to the hospital for yet anther operation in March this year. This time one of the world-famous