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 



