Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/102

90 which have been done to better the lot of the wounded. Firstly, about facial surgery. In this war of high explosives it often happens that men will be brought in with all their faces blown away, with practically no face left beneath their brows, their noses gone, their cheeks gone, their jaws and their tongues gone. In the old days, if those men had survived at all, they could only have survived as objects of pity and horror and disgust. But today the facial surgeon steps in and re-makes their faces. The facial surgeon begins by taking a bone from the man's leg. Out of that bone they model him a new jaw-bone, which they graft onto the stumps of the old. Then cunning artists model him a new palate and a new set of teeth. Then, bit by bit, they begin to make him new cheeks. They get little bits of skin from the man's arm, and other little bits from volunteers, and they graft these on to what was left of the man's cheeks. Though it takes a long time to do, they do at last make complete cheeks. Then they take a part of a sheep's tongue and graft it on to the roots of the man's tongue, so that it grows. Then they add artificial lips, an artificial nose, and whiskers, beard and moustaches, if the man chooses. They turn the man out,