£6 FOR TWO EYES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12757, 29 September 1919, Page 10

£6 FOR TWO EYES.

The prices to-day of artificial limbs of all varieties are most high. Like everything else, the price has “gone up - ’ very considerably of late- Time was when a man who had lost a leg went to the village carpenter and was fitted with a wooden one at a cost of a sovereign or so. The modem artificial leg or arm, however, _is a complicated and ingenious piece of mechanism, and the cost has risen proportionately. The cost of an artificial leg nowadays is from £ls. to £25 apiece, and arms at from £lO upwards. One type of artificial arm, indeed, invented bv M. Cauet, a French orthopaedist, costs a lot more, bnt it is fitted with a patent hand which enables the wearer to write, pick up money,' and even play a violin. Ears, with drums, cost £ls each; and really good artificial eyes are £6 the air. It will be seen, “therefore, that completely to reconstruct a man who has had tho misfortune to lose both arms and both legs, and to Lave Ir.eu deprived of Im sight and hearing, would cost about £IOO. Some price!