Norwich bulletin., 1915-05-12
Mendinq Broken Soldiers.

Germany is patching up and mend
ing her broken soldiers with remark
able speed at the new 'Krankenhaus"
in Barmbeck, a suburb of Hamburg.
This great hospital, which covers sew
eral acres of graund was completed
early last fall at a cost OF many mill
lions of marks, and has a. capacity OF
1000 beds. Nine hundred of them now
contain soldiers.
The most interesting part of the
hospital is the orthopaedic institute,
where the soldiers are being massaged,
and bathed and exercised back into
usefulness, either on the battlefield or
in private life. A heretofore unheard
of percentage does get back the use
of paralyzed limbs and damaged func-
tions.
When the bullet, shrapnel or shell
wound that put the soldier out of bus
mess has healed, it leaves him dis
abled in almost as great a. variety OF
ways as there are wounds, and fire.
quently with greatly impaired ability
to walk or run, or to use his hands,
arms and fingers.
According to the nature of his dis
ability therefore he is first given a
series of baths-mud, sand, hot water,
acid light, and electricity. He lies for
hours in a bathtub of rich, black, hot
mud, or he sits in queer looking recep-
tacles while hot sand pours down onto
him and makes his nerves Jingle.
He is lowered on a chair by means
of pulley into water as hot as any
man can stand, and after time, I'M
der the soothing, softening influence
he is able to move limbs that before
were immobile. He sits with an arm
in an acid bath or with electricity
coursing through his system until
gradually he becomes supple.
Then he moves into a room filled
with fantastic instruments, each de-
SiOnad eyiUa NAV narfiPU1ar
muscles. If it is a leg that has gone
out of commission he mounts a ma
chine not unlike a bicycle and pedals
for hours until at last he has won
back the use of his limb,
If a bullet has leSSened the soldier S
ability to breathe, he is suspended by
straps under his arms and slowly
drawn upward by a sort of hoist which
facilitates his inhalationS. He learns
how to crook his knee, twist his wrist
raise his arm and turn his head.
So prominent a part does the use OF
the vacuum play that there is a vac
uum room where the convalescents
sit, one with vacuum on a part of his
| arm, pulling up the flesh about a wound
others with the machines on theiI
backs, their legs, on almost every part
of their anatomy.
There are countless patients with
arms or legs that have stiffened ir
| peculiar ways. One finds them, also
| together in big room, with odd look
| ing mechanical contrivances strapped
to arms or legs-contriVances that car
| be tigntened so as to bend the arm q
| fraction of a centimeter more at a time
until joints have been coaxed back
into the habit of moving.
AS the patient lies on bed with q
| wounded knee that must be raised g
wooden contrivance with screws, under
his leg, performs the duty without the
usual pain of such an operation. Or
a pulley arrangement on the wall be-
hind him lifts his arm and turns is ir
an arc.
So frequent are the operations at the
Barmbeck hospital that the huge OPP
Grating room is served by a double
| window connecting with the antiscep-
| tic chamber. Instruments are passed
out one window, cleaned and passed
through the other, where another pa
| tent may be ready.
A group of a dozen correspondents
many of them men who had frequent.
| ~ been at the front, had been under
fire and who had had an opportunity
to see some of the horrors of the bat.
| tlef1eld, recently visited Barmbeck. Tt
a man they agreed that the patients II
! the hospitals, with their twisted anc