HELP FOR THE CRIPPLED

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16096, 20 September 1924, Page 19 (Supplement)

HELP FOR THE CRIPPLED

MIRACLE-WORKING SURGEONS. (By Wesley Spragg.) "And immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength." That sentence out of a Bible story has been in my ears more or less continuously since I returned to my home two days ago. It appears that the man who is referred to had never walked, but something happened and he became immediately and completely cured, for "he, leaping: up, stood, walking and leaping." A wonderful story which taxes belief, in these days—and yet leave out the "immediately" and substitute for it "months," say four; or, to include the "leaping" stage, allow a few more; and that is the history of scores of happenings at our own doors.

Not all of people lame from their birth, but quite a number of them, and, for the rest, victims as pitiful; children whom paralysis has left with twisted, distorted, useless limbs and bodies. And, mind you,- the modern miracles arc as complete and wonderful as was the one wrought by Peter and John—none the less wonderful because a surgeon and an interval of time come in between the beginning: and the completion of the cures. This is the story of King George V. Hospital at Rotorua, and the wonderworking officer in charge. Whenever I go to Rotorua I always try to spend an hour with the surgeon and his patients there, or, maybe, a portion of it in his operating-theatre among those fascinating knives and things that belong to it, and in his cast room looking at the plaster records of the miracles of operations performed. But the patients are the more interesting. The plaster cast shows the marvel of a deformed member made normal and shapely in appearance—but the actual fGot or leg, arm or spine, shows the life in the well-knit and flexible joint, the strong well-placed elastic tendons and the developing - muscles, and the kiddies show their pride in what to them are new possessions and new powers.

Three Mlraclee. Take this case. Boy, eleven years old —of good parentage—a nice intelligent lad, but born with legs so shrivelled and useless that the only thing to do with them was to tuck them into the smallest space and keep them out of the way. Eighteen months ago, when told by his father to show the doctor "the best he could do," this little fellow rolled across the rug: in front of the fire and hoisted himself upon his hands with his body poised in the air and his pitiful stems of legs, a negligible parcel of little sticks, folded closely together and balanced across his shrunken buttock, with head hanging downward; and looking between his arms he cheerfully saluted the doctor. That was the best he could do. Peter and John were wanted badly, or, maybe, the ristit man gifWi with power from the same source had come.

Six weeks ago this boy's feet touched the ground, to be used as feet, for the first time. On Sunday last he hurried, not gracefully, but very proudly, and I thought gratefully, across the lawn to show off his entirely new accompbshment of walking. During the preceding" week this dear kiddie, who, until the miracle-worker took him in hand, was worse than legless, with the help of two sticks and trusting to splints to keep his yet fragile bones from snapping, walked from the hospital to the sanatorium grounds and back—say, two miles—only being carried over the dangerous crossing's I Miracle ? Surely I Here is another bairn. Evidently in anticipation, he is rapidly unlacing a stout servceable pair of apparently ordinary-fitting- boots. He has been in hospital for four months, and is just due to leave it. A shapely foot is quickly bared. The beautifully-healed scars showing where the long, clean incisions had been made on ankle and foot, and the tiny pink marks of the stitches, like cleverly-spaced laceholes, first attract attention, and then comes the real thing, the vigour of the little foot, not a plaster cast, but a firm, yet flexible, bit of living: bone, tendon, sinew and muscle, which will carry the weight of a healthy boy, and upon which he will yet walk "leaping"—and four months ago that foot and its fellow were turned back from their ankles, cramped and twisted out of semblance of a foot, and all the walking that was done was upon the ankle joint.

I had previously seen the casts of this boy's feet as they were just four months ago. I now saw the reconstructed foot. Was it a miracle? You may call it what you like. Peter and John's job was not a bigger one. Given a few more months and I g-uess \their cure was scarcely a better one. I was allowed to examine the Arm ankle joints and the newly-fixed tendons One of these had been lengthened by so much as would let the foot come straight by having spliced into it the pieces which had been taken out in the shortening of the opposite tendon I tried the elasticity of the foot bv pressing it back with my hand, and the resistance was practically that of a normal one.

I would like to tell of the case of a baby born with a severed spine—l am afraid that is not the way to describe it, but that was what was the matter It was brought to the hospital when a month old. and was operated upon by having a piece of bone grafted into it's spine. It is now 12 months old and is learning to walk. Isn't it divine healing? isn't that surgeon as useful and as honoured as were those two men who helped the lame beggar in Jerusalem nearly 1900 years ago? Space at King George Hospital.

I am sorry that space will not allow me to tell of the 600 children who have passed through this hospital since it was opened in 1920 to deal with such cases, or of the other 63 who at prcsen enjoy the unremitting attention of doctor and nurses, or of their dormitories set among the thousands of daffodils on beautiful Pukeroa Hill overlooking flotorua and Mokoia or or the schoolroom and its two excellent touchers, provided by the Education Department to keep the children abreast of their studies, or of the Sunday school, their play, and their homo life in a place which is all in keeping with the gentle quality, the miraculous surgical ability, and the tireless devotion,of the unassuming: superintending head. '

And now I come to my message. There. aro sparc cots fop 5Q m children at King George V Hospital and I want to say that if any one belonging lo me was deformed or misshapen in limb ~r spine, born so or as the result of disease, or accident' no matter how bad or how hopeless I or anybody else might think (heir case lo he, ] would move. Heaven, and if necessary, the. other place, as well! to get that sufferer under the c.hvv, if only for examination, of one of Ihe four or five specially trained and (|ii>ilifled surgeons whose presence enriches lliis Dominion. After having seen Ihe impossible which has been dorm al

King George's, I should nn| M anyone, doctor, surgeon, or otherwise, per suade me that the case ..was. hopelcuS

until one of these special men said so. They should at least see my patient. For me to stop short of that would, for me, be criminal neglect and unpardonable cruelty.

Auckland Public Hospital has such a surgeon, and for the country south of Auckland, far and wide, the marvellous skill of the Government medical superintendent at King Georg:e V. Hospital, Rotorua, is available at the cost of the small Government fee, or as may be otherwise arranged, and with almost limitless hope, especially for young children, deformed, crippled, or paralytic- ...