MIRACLE OF SURGERY.

A FACE REBUILT.

N.Z. SURGEON'S SKILL.

WONDERFUL GRAFTING WORK.

Not the least of the strides which science lias made as a result of the war is in the realm of plastic surgery. The world-wide conflict afforded material and opportunity for surgical work 011 a scale previously undreamed of, and wonderful cures were made, the tissues of the healthy human body responding in amazing fashion to the work of the skilled doctor.

A remarkable case in point is that of Gunner .Tim Walker, of the Now Zealand Field Artillery, whose face was literally blown away by a fragment of shell casing at the battle of I'asschendaele, but has been reconstructed. After elev«u years the man in the gauze mask (as Tinker was known) has become the man mrh the synthetic face. This miracle of surgery was accomplished, appropriately enough, by a fellow New Zealander —J)r. Pickerill, of Otago, now practicing in Sydney.

•liiii Walker is now .'i.l. Ho enlisted in serving during his first moutln of tin* war on Gallipoli. He was not wounded on the Peninsula, an<l when his regiment returned to Egypt after tlit e\ac!ia.tii>n he transferred from the Mounted Rifles to the Field Artillery. He went through the carnage of the Somme and Messines unscathed, hut afterwards there came Passchendacle and an unspeakably terrihle wound, wliich might well have meant a living death. Walker was struck by a piece of gas shell casing, which hit him sidewavs across the face without entering the skull. Ihe whole of the upper jiw was shattered; the nose was cut oil", leaving a terrible hole between the eye-; the lips were blown away, and the flesh of his chin hung over his neck.

I he wounded man regained consciousness in England in a militarv hospital, but the exigencies of the war <1 id not allow of plastic surgery, and it was not until long afterwards that he underwent the lirst operation of the series which literally remade his face. Wonderful grafting work was 11 tin- in Sydney by Dr. Pickerill. portions of the fcalo, (he shoulder and the alidomen be.ng placed in position. Nature re-

sponded, and after long months of pain Walker is a new man.

He has regained more than liis face, for. as lie say-: "Pain;" Well. I can walk down J'itt Street now and be treated like all the rest of the 1) liters. I've pot a real 'mo.' tool"—this la-t a reference to the fact that part of the «calp. carrying hair, was successful! v grafted on to his upper lip.