The Madison journal. (Tallulah, Madison Parish, La.) 1888-current, 1915-03-20
AMERICAN DENTISTS HELP MAKE
FRENCH ARMY FIT FOR SERVICE
Remarkable Operations Performed Wounded Soldiers Arouse
Interest in New Aspect Of War Sugey-Piece Of Rib Sub
sttuted for Jawbone-Armies of the World Slow to Rec
ognize Importance Of Work Done by Tooth Doctors

character of the problems presented
for solution in the dental clinic of the
American ambulance.
Rib In Place of Jawbofe.
Roughly speaking, the injuries which
the writer actually saw one morning
in the clinic were about as much worse
than those reported, in photographs,
from bad railway accidents as these
latter were worse than face injuries
of ordinary life. The most striking If
not the most interesting cases were
those in which all or most of the lower
jaw had been shot away. The basis
of repairing such mouths was the sub
stitution of piece of rib for the miss
ing jawbone. Teeth were placed upon
the new jaw and in the course of few
weeks the patient could speak and eat
normally. There were some curious
cases in which the tongue had been
shot off In the middle. An English
boy who had gone to the hospital in
that condition spoke quite clearly out
Of his made-over mouth after only a
few weeks of care.
There were many cases, too, where
bullets had entered at the top of the
jaw on one side of the face, clipped
of from twelve to sixteen teeth fatty
down along the jaws, and blown the
whole business-teeth, pieces of jaw
bone and shreds of tissue-out through
hole which took up practically all of
the opposite fiat side of the lower face
After very short time such cases are
completely cured, so that the patient
may have far better mouth than he
had when he went to the hospital. The
surgeons work In cooperation with the
dentists, so that any complications in
the way of assesses in the various
facial glands are properly attended to
medically.
A difficulty of the various Jaw frac.
lures under treatment was that the
bones in question were not merely
broken into ten or dozen separated
morsels-a thing which dentists know
we'll how to deal Without were rather
pulverized into perfectly unrecogniz-
able mass Of utterly smashed I'D mat.
ter. Teeth were blown down into OBJ
! scure corners at the bottom of the
mouth, from which position they could
be extracted only with great difficulty
on account Of the danger of bleeding.
Xray photographs gave no assistance
to the operators in these cases because
there were literally no solid pieces left
for putting together.
The patients appeared to suffer ex.
tremely little pain during the course of
the fixing Of all sorts of complicated
wire apparatus in their wretched
mouths because the pressures and
forces employed were applied SO very
gradually. There were several men
present for dressing who had been un.
der ether on the operating table two
hours before while a surgeon placed
morsels Of their ribs where their own
lower jaws had once been; these fel.
lows were smoking cigarettes and
whistling a little and trying out a bit
of conversation just to see how the
new halves of their mouths worked
Apart from the line of stitches up and
down the center of their chins the
faces looked quite normal.
From Many Hospitals.
1t Is extraordinary what a large
number of such difficult cases one den.
list can attend to between nine and