The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1917-12-18
MIRACLES OF SURGERY
GIVE MEN NEW FACES
JAW MADE OF RIB AND SCALP
AMONG THE MARVELS OF
PRESENT-DAY SCIENCE.
PRIVATE CASEY, MANGLED
AND DISFIGURED, WHOLE AGAIN
Other Wonderful Operations Are AL
so Made-Such as New Noses, New
Cheeks and Even New Eyelids Be-
ing Replaced on Wounded Men.

II
Private Casey, on the
\ first day of the battle of the Somme,
July LIST, last year, was struck by a
piece of she'll which carried away his
lower jaw, leaving a vacant horror
where half his face should have been.
| Casey walked five miles to a dressing
station, without assistance. This is
the story of what has happened to
him since.
Discussion of the most horrible
wounds in the newspapers is most
uncommon; but the desire to spare
the feelings of the public does not
prevent soldiers, and the wives and
mothers of soldiers, from thinking,
sometimes, about what bit of shrap-
mel can do to the human face. 1t is
this sort of injury and not death,
that men fear, at the front.
Just before the war | remember
seeing grewsome little one act play,
''The Black Mask" a French thriller
which turned upon the terror inspir-
ed by miner, his face mangled by
an explosion, who was forced to wear,
in his own home, covering to spare
those about him from a constant hor-
ror. Today, in Europe, such wounds
as that suffered by Private Casey are
common. That is why l am telling
this story; for it has happy end
ing. No reason now exists for that
morbid fear of facial Disagreement
that so many men dread more than
death, more than the loss of limbs
l talked to Private Casey today,
in ward of the Queens hospital at
Sidcup, in Kent. And he talked to
me. He came to the hospital a man
without face, from whose photo
graph, as he was when he arrived, l
had turned away with shudder. Now
he is well on the way to recovery;
and when he leaves the hospital he
can walk down the Strand without
mask, and nobody will look at him
twice. He has been given a face; not
an artificial face, but a real one; and
science Of manipulative surgery have
done for Private Casey, the miracle
working surgeons feel safe in saying
that there is no face wound which
leaves the patient alive that can pre-
vent them from sending the suffer-
er out into the world again with
whole face.
A Miracle of Surgery.
The surgeons at the hospital by
constant experiment on mangled
faces have built up the new science
during the war. One of them is the
man who gave Casey back his face.
He took some portions of rib, and
live cartilage, from the body. A Gu
rious fact that experiment has shown
Is that, in these operations, the bone
and sinew and skin to be transplant
ed must come from the patient him
sself, to give the best results.
Out of the pieces of rib, the sur
geon constructed the skeleton of
new lower jaw, which he attached bv
the transpLanted cartilage to the
muscles where the old jaw had been
torn away. Still, of course, there
was no means of support for the
new jaw.
The next step was to cut a broad
strip across the scalp. This vas de-
tached from Casey's skull, and
brought down over his head at the
ears so that the blood circulation in
the transformed mass of flesh should
Dbe continued. The piece of Casey's
head was then placed around the rib