A young soldier at Walter Reed Hospital offered his opinion of his new artificial arm. Said he: “It’s not worth a good goddamn.”
The arm, made of steel and leather, weighed about ten pounds. On the end of it was what the Army cheerfully calls a “miracle hand”—a black-gloved affair with a thumb and forefinger that spring together when the good arm jerks some leather thongs strung across the body like a conductor’s signal cord. The thongs are hard to wash, and the boys say that they soon begin to smell. The arm can be fitted with a pair of hooks with which, after much practice, a man can button himself up, tie shoelaces and lift up to 20 pounds.
Artificial legs, though often heavier than they should be, are less complicated than arms and hence generally more satisfactory.* But the overall fact is that modern prostheses (artificial limbs) are uncomfortable, ungainly, ugly. After months of operations and fitting, most amputees are disappointed.
Laggard Government. Amputees at Walter Reed claim that there have been no improvements in prostheses since the Civil War. Some say there have been none since the Middle Ages—and cite as evidence a knight’s false arm.
Government participation in prosthetic research was nil until last March when OSRD set up a committee to collect and pass on new inventions. The committee has two experts, installed at Northwestern University. The armed services and Veterans’ Administration have done almost nothing about the problem.
The Army has undertaken no research whatever. Nearly all Army amputees are discharged as soon as they are fitted with temporary prostheses. These are made of stock parts manufactured by commercial limb-makers and fitted by hastily-trained G.I.s. They often break down. The limb-makers say part of the trouble is the Army’s insistence on using its own personnel as fitters, instead of civilian experts.
Two years ago Colonel William F. Scheumann, chief of Walter Reed’s dental laboratory, and some assistants began working on the problem on their own time. Superiors told them to stop, saying that research would soon begin in another laboratory. It never did.
The Veterans’ Administration, responsible for providing permanent prostheses, has simply given each veteran about $150 to go out and buy a limb. It has financed no research, being content to accept the word of the 500 commercial limb-makers that their research is adequate.
(More than half of the top executives of limb concerns wear prostheses themselves, and are as anxious for improvements as anyone. But so far their scattered research has produced only minor improvements.
They have recently established a central laboratory in Detroit that may get results.)
The Navy is a little better: 1) some 25 experts at a laboratory at Mare Island are working on strong, lightweight legs in the one & only such Government-financed research project; 2) the dental laboratory at Philadelphia’s Naval Hospital is working on natural-looking false hands; 3) Lieut. Commander Lamar W. Harris, dentist at the Navy’s Bethesda, Md. medical center, announced last fortnight that he had developed a one-pound, natural-looking hand that works well.
Some industries not in the prosthetic business have tried to help. Northrop Air craft, Inc. has developed a steel cable to replace the smelly leather thongs and a “pronator” which gives an artificial arm a rotating wrist. General Motors has been investigating the prosthetic possibilities of certain aircraft materials.
Plans & Prospects. At long last, several groups and individuals are now trying to prod the Government into action. The American Legion has been agitating for a Federal limb laboratory since 1942. Colonel Robert S. Allen (onetime co-columnist of Washington Merry-Go-Round), who lost his right arm in Germany, has unleashed his picturesque vocabulary on the Army; he has extracted a promise from Under Secretary of War Patterson that something will be done. Walter Reed has announced that it will open a prosthetic laboratory within the next few weeks.
If the laboratory does not materialize, the hospital’s amputees may carry out a notion they have nursed for some time —to go up on Capitol Hill and wave their ugly artificial legs and arms in the galleries of Congress.
*Three-quarters of World War IPs 16,500 U.S. amputees are leg cases.
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