The grave problem of re-education of amputation cases, and in a more general sense of all the maimed, now confronts us. We believe it to be worth while to indicate the general principles so far as they are at present understood.
I
At the outbreak of war the idea of the disabled in general, and particularly of those who had had a limb amputated, was often to give up any really active trade and to seek a "situation" generally as an official with no actual manual labour. It must be confessed that many people, especially the nurses, encouraged them in this, and possibly the latter would not deny having done so.
It has rapidly become evident that there are too many maimed to be supplied with situations as caretakers of public gardens or doorkeepers, and that they will not be able to gain a living by making tricoloured decanter-mats of string or raffia or artificial flowers, when bazaars organised for their benefit by tender-hearted souls have gone out of fashion.
One of us was present a short while ago at the following little scene:—
In a hospital where there were two amputation cases, one through the lower fourth of the thigh, the other through the middle of the leg, both agricultural labourers, a distinguished man of letters, actuated by the best intentions, asked them what they counted on being able to do after they had been fitted with artificial limbs. The first replied that he hoped to return to agricultural work, the second that he would never be able to do that but would look out for a "situation." Our friend was much surprised to hear us say that he would be ill employed in using his influence to obtain his desire for the second patient, because a man with only one leg could work on the land with almost no diminution of his ordinary capacity, even with the old-fashioned kneeling peg leg.
As Jean Camus has well said in a recent article in the Paris Médical, "We are beginning to pass beyond the phase when re-education of the maimed was left to chance. It is felt now that the frivolous efforts of benefactresses who, acting with the best intentions but without reflections, are delighted to be able to transform into a shorthand typist an honest farm labourer who had a strong attachment to the soil and could quite well return to it, must be avoided. Such feats are both culpable and absurd."
These fantastic ideas must be got rid of, and all our efforts must be co-ordinated, the complexity of the conditions to be dealt with being duly weighed.