MARVELS OF SURGERY

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 4, 6 January 1916, Page 7

MARVELS OF SURGERY

THE PATCHING UP OF SOLDIERS.

(«Y TELEGRAPH.—SPECIAL 10 THE POST.)

AUCKLAND, This Day.

The wonderful progress in the science of surgery and in the manufacture of appliances has been vividly demonstrated by the patching up and equipping with artificial limbs of men mutilated in a score of ways. Several soldiers who arrived by the Ruahine who were expected to be quite incapable are now moving about with ease and comfort Two men have been fixed up with artificial limbs, and others who have been shot through the lungs and injured in other ways which a few years ago would have meant permanent disablement, show no outward signs of the battering of war ' LanceCorporal F W. Buckley, of the Canterbury Battalion, attached to^Jhe machine gun section, walks with a slight limp that would never betray the fact that he is minus the better part of one leg. " I was with the Main Body, and escaped injury till 12th June," stated the soldier. On that day there was nothing much doing for the machine guns, but the shells were falling around pretty thick. I was taking things easy, when I heard a terrific explosion, and I felt something hit my leg. The first thing I remembered was having to bury my head in my clothing to get away from the fumes of the explosion, which half suffocated me. I next experienced a sensation as if someone had placed a red-hot iron upon my leg, and looking down I saw my foot lying on the ground. I called out to one of my mates to tie up my leg, but the sight completely unnerved him, and he was unable to help me. There happened to be a puttee lying in a trench, and I crawled to this, tied it round my knee, and stopped the bleeding. I was feeling a bit dazed, and I called out to my mate to fetch me some water He did this, and it revived me sufficiently to enable me to hop out of the trench, which was just in front on the main firing-line, and get back for assistance. When I got there after more hobbling about the ambulance men took me."

Buckley went on to describe how, prior to receiving his wound, he was blown up in the air, machine gun and all, on Walker's* Ridge, on which, occasion he was temporarily knocked unconscious. The gun was fixed up again in time to train it on the Turks as they charged Buckley proceeded to describe how, after his arrival at Queen Mary's Hospital at Roehampton, his leg \yas finally fixed up, and the missing portion replaced by an artificial limb. Within four da,ys he was able to walk about for a whole day without removing the dummy limb. The wooden leg was affixed four inches below the knee, and' the foot was rubber, and so built up of springs that the wearer could walk naturally without the slightest jar. Suiting the action to the word, the soldier strode along the room with a less limp than that of a man with a much minor injury. The leg, he explained, was built so that thero was no weight on the stump of the limb itself, but it all fell on tho upper leather supports. There were knee-joints and steel parts fastening on to the thigh, the artificial limb finally being supported over the shoulder. Tho whole, contrivance was three pounds lighter than the estimated weight of the missing limb.

A Canterbury man added that another soldier from his province, Pte. Cooksley, had been similarly fixed up, and, speaking of the wonderful appliances being used at Home, instanced a case of which he personally knew where a wounded Tommy had lost both legs, an arm, and an eye, and yet had been patched up. He had been provided with two wooden legs, an artificial arm, and a glass eye. He could walk about with the aid of a stick, while his arm was a wonderful contrivance, the fingers opening and shutting with the movement of the shoulder. He could. pick up almost anything, hold a cigarette in the dummy fingers, and convey it to his mouth with the artificial arm.