BROKEN IN THE WARS.

WOUNDED GERMANS.

On their tour of the London military hospitals, Colonel Woodwark’s party of journalists had a glimpse of German wounded prisoners in delicious English beds. Most of them were very young, and suffering not less than our own lads. Here was one poor creature on the threshold of manhood with both his eyes gone, and in an adjoining bed was a case of terrible abdominal wounds, the drawn face and the pale blue eyes, tearful beyond tears, telling of unspeakable anguish. Many of these soldiers, British and German, are unable to get any sleep because of the demand that their nerves make upon them to go on fighting this endless war, as if they were still in the trenches. One of the wounded prisoners, indeed, looked as if he expected the battle to be resumed in the hospital ward by his visitors. He was bearded like the pard, and out of a mass of black hair blazed two great dark eyes, whether in terror, hatred, defiance, or mere fever it is impossible to say, but as his burning gaze fell first upon one member of the party and then upon another he might have been an infuriated wild beast at bay. In hospital, however, international enmity has no meaning, and these wounded Germans are treated according to their needs.

REMARKABLE OPERATIONS.

The Hammersmith Hospital specialises in desperate joint cases, and there one learns all that is to be known of “claw hand,” “trench foot,” and the innumerable limb deformities which are caused by gunshot wounds. At Hammersmith the surgeons have transplanted muscles from the front of a man’s wrist to the back to enable him to raise his hand.

There are cases of the removal of bone as well as of the removal of muscles and flesh from one part of a man’s body to another. Three inches of bone had been blown away in a patient’s arm, and to restore this the surgeon went to the man’s own leg and removed a piece of the fibula, leaving intact the encasing membrane, which threw up new bone, so that the leg was none the worse. The removed bone was sharpened at both ends and dovetailed into the injured limb, which has been completely restored. One man who simply would not have his foot amputated, though it seemed to be doomed by several diseased bones, considers that his obstinacy has been justified by the result. The surgeons have removed all the diseased bone, and brought together and rearranged all the healthy bone in the foot, so that the patient has a perfectly sound foot, which only lacks the usual joints and the muscular walking action.

The Kensington Wax Supply Depot, a voluntary organisation, has done a splendid work in providing the Hammersmith Hospital with special splints.

At Wandsworth Common, where the wounded soldiers have the premises and grounds of the Victoria Patriotic Schools, there are officers as well as men – 900 officers and 1,500 men, when all the beds are occupied.

Facial wounds especially are dealt with here, and Lieutenant Derwent Wood exercises all his ingenuity as a sculptor in patching up damaged faces with copper masks painted flesh-colour, and, when necessary, with imitation eyelashes and moustaches. There have been some bad disfigurements, but these are certainly minimised considerably by this method of masking the face. Members of the St. Dunstan organisation come to teach the unhappy blind new occupations adapted to their condition, and they are most sincerely welcomed.

ASTONISHED SURGEONS.

All kinds of jaw cases – ununited fractures, displacements of the jaw, and organic jaw damage – are treated at the Croydon Military Hospital. A man with the whole of his lower jaw shot away was seen here by the visitors to be surmounting by mechanical treatment his terrible deprivation. The metal Gunning splint is a contrivance for bringing a displaced jaw back into position, and anyone who has experienced or witnessed the unsightly distortion caused by a displaced jaw will bless this gradual but certain remedy. As the surgeon says, it “educates” the teeth to meet, and when one’s lower teeth have got round to one’s ear they demand a vast amount of education. At the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Millbank – noticeable like Wandsworth for its floods of light and abundance of flowers – there are also interesting jaw cases. Here a Serbian officer who had lost a large piece of his lower jaw was, unlike some men in similar cases, able to articulate distinctly and to eat naturally, and he was conspicuously cheerful. The explanation was that an ingenious surgeon had transferred from the officer’s leg to his jaw a portion of his tibia, giving the jaw an almost normal appearance and a normal action.

In this fine hospital, by the way, there was a good example of German surgery. A young Guardsman, now an exchanged prisoner, had the misfortune to be wounded and captured in the first half-hour of the British appearance on the French front. The German surgeons had removed his foot, but in such a way as to leave him his heel, of which he is inordinately proud, exhibiting it and slapping it with great gusto, and proclaiming that he can walk on it with the aid of a stick. He will, of course, be given an artificial foot in due time, and it will never be noticed that he has been mutilated.