MARVELS OF SURGERY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 111, 7 April 1930, Page 11

MARVELS OF SURGERY.

DEFORMITIES REMOVED. OLD FRIENDS WITH NEW FACES. At the Toronto Western Hospital they are building up a 'new face for the victim of an explosion. A new nose, ear, chin, lower eyelid, new lips, the plastic surgeon has moulded into the shape of former lineaments that were obliterated. Still shrinking from human beings, this reconstructed man, now almost ready to mingle once again with his fellows and make a living, is happily occupied on leatherwork,_ under the direction of the occupation therapy worker at the hospital. Here are hidden deformities from burns, tuberculosis and cancer. Eyelids, especially, that have turned inside out following explosions are again restored from skin grafted, usually from the victim’s own abdomen to his arm or hand, then transferred to its final destination. “A month to eight weeks,” described the specialist, “is the time required for the permanent transfer of one feature. Usually a local anaesthetic is sufficient, and very littlp pain accompanies the operation.” , • ■ • In the event of a general anaes r thetic, there has been developed largely by Toronto physicians a special technique by which every drop of the anaesthetic is measured. Proof of its safety and effectiveness is found in the fact that in twelve to fifteen years there has not been a single death and never any trouble. The answer to a recent pronouncement that the severe Canadian climgte is badly suited to plastic surgery work is contained in the records in this connection at the Toronto Western Hospital, where Dr. Fulton Risdon has been continuing the practice of plastic surgery for which he was noted during the war. NEW NOSE FROZEN. Somewhere, only a few miles from Toronto, is a man whose delicate new nose has been frozen three times without ill effects. The idea that reconstructed people can live only in the tropics is combate’d by the Toronto .Western Hospital specialists. Pensions here, they emphasise, are usually sufficient, so that it is not necessary for such people to stay out on below zero days, and, for short distances, a scarf pulled over the grafts is sufficient protection. “The Canadian Government, through the Department of Pensions and National Health, has been particularly interested in this type of 6urgery so far as war victims are concerned,” said Major Galbraith, general superintendent of Toronto Western Hospital. “The Workmen’s Compensation Board has also been doing all it can, recognising the incapacitating shock such deformities are even to the self-assur-ance of the victim, who shrinks from contact with people who cannot help showing the horror they feel at the sight of such an.unfortunate before the plastic surgeon has made him human once more.” ...