LEGS TO ORDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7270, 7 March 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

LEGS TO ORDER.

"We have the names of about IS,OOO veterans who have applied for repairs," said Mr. Ramsey, who has charge of the artificiallimb department of the Surgeon-General's oifice, to a Washington Star reporter. "You know we fit them out with new sets of legs, arms, orother apparatus, every fiveyears. It is now getting toward the close of one of theee periods, and we hare repaired 14,000 veterans." "Aren't the one-legged men dying off?" asked the reporter. "Now that's an interesting question. I guess they are. I presume many of those whose names we have, have since died, but I can't tell certainly. Now, as I've said, every live years we reconstruct the maimed veterans of the array, but they have their choice to take the repairs or the money. The allowance for a lei? is £15, for anything less than a leg is £10. From one period to another many old veterans drop out. Some of them make one or two applications, and then we never hear from them again. Naturally, we conclude, when they don't send for their money or their legs, they must be dead, and have no more use for them. But we don't limit ourselves to men that have actually lost their limbs. A man that has lose the use of his limbs is entitled to a wooden kg or arm, as the case may be, though he can't wear them. So, you see, we can't keep a record of all the one-legged men, but I guess there ain't as many as there used to be. let there are many who haven't any legs at all, and some with neither legs or arms. Then there are many who have not lost their limbs, but who have no power to move. There is one man who gets two arms and two legs allowance, who cannot move any part of his body except the little finger on the left hand, which he could bend the least little bit. There is another, a New England soldier, whose arms and legs are dead, and who is blind in both eyes. Not long ago a man came in here with no arms and sat down at one of the desks and wrote with his teeth. It was not particularly tine writing, but you could read it. 1 know of another man—he was in the sharpshooter's service—who can'c be stood on his feet because he is bent in the back so that his head would strike the floor first. Think how many years these men have suffered, and many of them are still living ! why there's hardly enough lefii of some of them to hold together. But you asked if they were dying off. Now here's a roll we are just completing," and he laid several immense tally sheets out on his desk. "You can see how they ran. This is the fourth period, and here's a man who has got four legs—quite a number for one man if he used them all at once. And here's another who has got four legs and foar arms. No, we don't furnish heads, but we supply parts of heads, jaws, and sections of skulls and eyes. Now, here's a man who has got one leg in the first period and has never got any since ; he is probably dead. But here is another who came in for repairs just after the close of the war and was never heard of from again until now, when he comes up again. "He didn't wear out very fast. Some men wear well and don't trouble about getting repaired so often- Here's another man," he added, pointing to another name on the list—" here's a man who cornea up now for first time, having done without his limb all these years. It runs this way, you see, all the way through. Those men who have not applied for their fourth leg, or whatever it is they want, we conclude mast be dead. Some, I presume, will live to get five or six less or as many arms, , '