WAR SERVICE OF MEDICAL PROFESSION 289 



RECONSTRUCTION WORK IN HOSPITALS 



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I The development of reconstruction work in army hospitals 



I has been one of the strikingly good results of the war. The 



\ idea is not altogether new, but it, like so many other advances 



in medicine and surgery, had, before the war, been confined 



to a certain few hospitals of the best class, and it also was of 



very unequal quality. The development during the war in this 



field consisted in applying the best features of the work to all 



our hospitals, in a standardized manner. 



The so-called reconstruction work was really divided into 

 two quite different sorts of undertakings, although they both 

 went along side by side, usually using the same methods and 

 principles, but with two separate and distinct objects in view. 

 The first was to occupy the man's mind and at the same time 

 to improve it, so that his spirits and morale were not impaired 

 by his long and possibly painful illness, f The purpose of the 

 morale treatment 'was to overcome the condition so long known 

 as hospitalism, a form of chronic invalidism which leads to help- 

 lessness and loss of initiative, which is entirely mental and has 

 no relation to the amount of physical deformity or of limitation 

 of function./ The second object is the restoration of function 

 of the injure^ part as completely and as early as possible. I To 

 accomplish these results, which are as a matter of fact, just 

 as important in civil life as in military, it was found that the 

 reconstruction work could not be postponed until the patient 

 was sufficiently recovered to be sent to another hospital espe- 

 cially set aside for this sort of teaching, but that it must be 

 started just so soon as the patient was able to do anything at 

 all, and that, therefore, every hospital where patients were sent 

 for anything more than emergency treatment must have a 

 " reconstruction staff " in addition to the medical and surgical 

 staff. These persons, sometimes physicians, but more often 

 teachers or psychologists, went into all the wards and started 

 instruction as soon as a patient was able to do anything; as, 

 for example, a man might be taught to do bead work simply 



