Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/63

 Popular Science Monthly

��47

��Saving the Shattered Legs of the Fighting Man

EVEN amidst the horrors of this present war the soldier of today is better off than ever before. At his beck and call are the fore- most surgeons of Europe and the most up-to-date hospital equipment in the world. Never was there a war in which the injured fighter was given such expert treatment.

One of the most important tasks devolving upon the surgeon is to prevent soldiers with shattered legs from be- coming cripples for life. The accompanying illustration shows an apparatus employed to save a soldier's leg severely injured by a shell. Such an apparatus was used in our Civil War with great success. Dr. Fred H. Albee, who recently returned to this country from the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, where the photograph illustrated was taken, counted one hundred and ten sol- diers with their shattered legs in slings.

The apparatus consists of weights, pul- leys and rubber bandages to support the leg in a position where the open wound will heal quickly and where the bones will knit to- gether without causing the leg to be too short or too long. From time to time X-Ray pictures are taken to see that the bones are growing together properly.

Where a simple frac- ture of the bone has taken place the leg is placed in a cast, but when the flesh has been ripped and the bone badly shattered a special scaffold has to be erected over the patient's bed and pul- leys and weights uti ized to enable the bones to grow to- gether in their cor- rect positions. Sometimes it is necessary to exert great pres- sure to prevent the bones from shortening.

���By means of weights and pulleys and spring devices the leg is exercised judiciously and prevented from shortening

��It Must Be Great to Be a Boy in a "Santa Claus" Town

AMONG the children it has been gen- erally reported for ages that the head- quarters of the jolly patron saint of Christ- mas is somewhere in the vicinity of the North Pole. But this theory has been ex- ploded both by Peary and Dr. Cook, so that even the tiniest youngsters now discredit it. Germany has been recognized as a great distributing center, if not the actual abode of the saint; but anyone will realize that the condition of affairs in Europe just now are not congenial to a saint.

However, we have it on good authority that Winchendon, Mass., is now the favored spot. There the principal occupation of the grown-up residents is the manufacture of toys, and there the after- school hours of the chil- dren are spent in the neighborhood of the fac- tories, on the lookout for a chance at trying- out some of the sample articles, as in the photograph on the left.

So many of these great toy factories are now running full blast, that Winchen- don has gained the name of the Toy Town of the whole. United States.

���It Int. lilmServ.

��A scene around one of the many toy factories at Winchendon, Mass., the toy town of America

�� �