NEW FACES FOR SOLDIERS.

PLASTIC SURGERY WONDERS

What has become of the men who had terrible facial wounds in the war? The foreign visitor to Britain often asks this question and finds it hard to believe that great numbers of these men arc not still dragging out hopeless and dreary existences in sad homes and hospitals. The "Daily Mail" learns that "of some 10,000 cases of this kind which passed through the main concentration hospital for bad facial injuries, the Queen's Hospital at Sidcup, only 10 or 15 men are regarded as incurably disfigured. The Ministry of Pensions is understood to be contemplating the purchase for these men of a country' house as a homo for them.

The wonderful number of cures is due largely to the skill of Major H. D. Gilles, R.A.M.C., chief plastic surgeon at the Sidcup Hospital. He has grown for the disfigured new lips, chins and cheeks, mended and replaced shattered jaws, and even replaced faces that had been literally burned away by terrible explosions. In mending wrecked facss his principle is "bone for bone, cartilage for cartilage, and fat fpr fat.'' He has built jaws with bits of bone fro*n the leg, cheeks with fatty tissue covered with strips of skin taken from the body, and noses with cartilage from the ribs.

Major Gillies paid a high tributes to the skill of his fellow plastic surgeons at Sidcup. "Their success in mak'.Dg good the wreckage of the war is practically complete/' he said. "The maimed men are to be found sitting alongside you in omnibuses and trains, working in shop and office, on the land, or bsck in the Navy and Army again. You would not 'have an inkling of what hiid happened to them.

"I can tell you of one caso, a pettyofficer in the Navy who had his face hurried off at the Battle of Jutland. He has had a new face built, is back in the Navy, and recently passed his gunnery tests. There have been other c:;ses as remarkable who are back in civil life' again." "Are the results permanent ?" Major Gillies was asked. "They are," he replied.