RE-MAKING A FACE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11508, 2 October 1915, Page 7

RE-MAKING A FACE.

PARIS SURGEONS' DEVICES.

REMARKABLE SURG EM,

If a man has neither nose to smell with, nor lips to drink with, nor a cheek to chew in, is he or can he become a man? Not without a miracle, perhaps. But there axe surgeons, and among them Drs Morestin and Tuffier, of the Rothschild Hospital in Paris, who perform the miracle, the miracle of reconstructing a man from his own ruins. M. Cristini, a correspondent of tho "Journal des Debats of Paris, was admitted recently to the Rothschild Hospital to see for himself the miraclo in question. An attendant asked him to look at the photograph of a man) wounded in the French trenches who had been admitted to tho hospital. 111 was a terrible picture. " The face lacked the lower portion of the left cheek, it lacked the chin, aud the lip-* and the nose. Could that be a man':' I could not help thinking of Victor 1 Hugo's description, ' His marrow wad no more in his bones nor his voice in his gullet. Had ho ever possessed am eye, and if so, where was it? " HE'S IMPROVED IT." While the correspondent was looking at this appalling picture tho hospital assistant made a sign to one of the patients' of tho hospital who was just going out to spend an afternoon at a kinematograph performance. "Here is our man," said the assistant. The correspondent stared uncomprehending, but the assistant added with a smile, "Yos, I assure you, this is the patient whose photograph you 1 have in your hand; the man who was! brought into hospital without cheek, without jaw, without chin, without lips, without nose." The correspondent at first thought' the assistant was "pulling his leg." For the patient who was just going out bore few or no signs of the terrible wounds indicated in the photograph.. His left cheek was the twin| brother of the light cheek; ho had an' excellent chin, lips that just opened in a genial smile, and a nose with an irreproachable contour. His face only bore the rapidly vanishing traces of some cuts and a few white marks «P surgical sewing. The patient himself proceeded to confirm the assistant's assertions, talking in the slang of the French infantryman: "Yes, it's myself; 'twasn't any good the Bodies spoiling my portrait; the doctor tricked l them after all. As you see, ho baa .manufactured for mo a very decent! face. For myself, I think lie's improved it, and I believe they'll find me) more of a knut when I get back into the country." Then he lit a cigarette and went off to his kinematograph while the assistant continued the story of the miracle. MARVELLOUS WORK. " The great point," ho said, "Avas! that the vital organs were still intact. After a few days of continued! washing and antiseptic treatment, the terrible wounds had practically cicatrised. Then Dr Morestin began his ' miracle. He took a portion of the patient's back and used it to replace the check. With the skin of the back ho fashioned the lips. Then he took' a portion of the mans short ribs to make the nose and the substance of the chin. From tho forehead he took the skin for the nose and from the stomach the skin for the chin. Finally, I when the man was practically refashioned, and could be permitted to look at his new face, Dr Morestin asked him if there was anything he regret- j ted. The soldier replied: "Yes, my moustache." " Oh,. don't you worry about that," said the doctor, and without even applying an anesthetic he took from the hairy nape of the neck a small strip of skin' and grafted it on the upper lip. " I can't promise you," said the surgeon. " that you will have as victorious a moustache'as that i which you left in the trenches, but in* any case you won't be hairless." The assistant added that, though ] the man would certainly grow a moustache, at present he goes " English," that is, clean-shaven. Subsequently the correspondent was informed that the Rothschild Hospital alone contains over* thirty convalescents who proudly display noses of flesh and blood sculptured for them by Dr Morestin. And at the' St Louis' Hospital there have been l count-Jess wounded men for whom the miraculous surgeon has reconstructed a part of tho face.