SURGERY AND WAR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 223, 3 November 1916, Page 8 (Supplement)

SURGERY AND WAR.

WONDERS IN ENGLAND. WITH ARTIFICIAL LIMBS. An account of the wonderful treatment of crippled soidiers at Queen Mary's Convalescent Auxiliary hospitals at Roehampton, is given in the Daily Chronicle. Here soldiers and sailors who have lost their limbs in the war are refitted, and they challenge the visitor to guess which of a man's two legs is artificial, and duly disclose to him that both are. "Youth can adapt itself to almost anything, and most of our wounded men are very young. "I have been on the top of a motor-bus already, and I have only had this leg four days,," exclaimed an eager lad, slapping the imitative mechanism, which it had been necessary to attach to his

body at the abdomen, as not even a stump of his old limb had been left He walked well with the aid of a stick and soon he will be able to walk without any aid at all. Another cycled a few hundred yards to show —as he did—that the action of the mechanical joints is indistinguishable from that of the joints which Nature gives. A third ran across a lawn with considerable speed though he had but one of his own legs, and the spectator could not tell at a glance which of them it was that he had lost. A young soldier who has had both his arms amputated above the elbows writes with either of the hands with which he has been fitted. and for the satisfaction of his visitors will lift a match from the floor with his artificial fingers. They will shake hands with you with their imitation hands, and you are surprised at the grip they can give. These results are in a great measure due to practice, and the proper exercises are enforced with the rigidity of military drill—happily for the maimed soldiers, for man is so indolent by nature that they would never acquire perfection in the use of their mechanical limbs if they were not compelled to make the daily and hourly effort. If a patient has but a shoulder joint or hip joint left the mechanic with the economy of art, will utilise it in the operation of the false limb, which will he bent or propelled by some little acquired shrug or twist of the surviving natural joint. One unfortunate officer at Roehampton had to have both his arms amputated so completely that there was no stump left in either case, and it was impracticable to fit him with a mechanical arm. The ingenious surgeons, however, created a stump on one of the shoulders by gathering up and twisting a piece of skin from his side and incorporating in it a piece of the tibia from his leg, and upon this contrived stump an artificial arm has been fixed. Roehampton is not content with giving the maimed soldiers and sailors arms and legs; it also fits them to earn their own livelihood under their new conditions. Employment has been found for men who have lost an arm in thte following capacities.—Commissionaire, gateman. gymnasium instructor, labour master in workhouse, liftman, lodgekeeper messenger, porter railway work (sundry duties), telephone switchboard attendant, timekeeper, traveller, ward master, watchman, weighman, Men who have lost a leg have been procured the following kinds of work —Bootmaking. motor driving, domestic service, electrical work, engineering, light duties at pit head (for miners), munition work, milking printing, telegraphy.