Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 131, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1916 — SCULPTOR MAKES NEW FACES FOR WOUNDED MEN [ARTICLE]

SCULPTOR MAKES NEW FACES FOR WOUNDED MEN

Copper Masks Are Molded by Francis Derwent Wood, a British Officer. REMARKABLE FACIALSURGERY Many Pathetic Cases Fall to Care of Celebrated Artist —Spends Months in Experiments Before Attemping His First Case — New Eye for Soldiers. London. —Not “new lamps tor old,” but “new faces for old,” is the cry of the modern Arabian Nights magician. This magician is a sculptor of renown, English by birth but half American by ancestry. He is Francis Derwent Wood, a name familiar in the United States, where various collectors possess examples of his work. Wood's steadily growing fame, however, was extended in America just before the war began, when he was commissioned by Lady Paget and the duchess of Marlborough on behalf of the American women in England to execute the statue of William Pitt, which, as soon as circumstances make the thing more suitable, will be presented by them to their native land in commemoration of the hundred years of peace between this country and America. Lieutenant W T ood, as he now is, has discovered how to give new faces to who have lost theirs in the war. He can make new eyes, cheeks, foreheads, chins; in fact, he is making them daily. Up to date Derwent Wood has made new faces, or at least parts of faces, for five such victims of war.

Remarkable Facial Surgery. The most pathetic case of all of these was that of a trooper named Everitt, whose face had been broken by an explosive bullet. His nose had been carried away almost entirely and his left cheek torn open from his ear to the corner of his mouth. Like most of these victims of facial disfigurement, he had to undergo operation after operation. He received his wound on May 13 of last year. Finally he was brought to a London hospital on September 2, and up to a couple of weeks ago, despite the fact that his wound had entirely healed and surgery admittedly had done all that it could for him, he remained a sad sight. Before the war he was a taxi driver. Now, made at least presentable by the wonderful “facial mask'’ which Wood has contrived for him, a mask consisting of false nose, cheek and a “mustache” which conceals his injured lip, ex-Trooper Everitt is plying his old trade again and doing well at it. “When he saw himself with his mask for the first time,” said the sculptor, “he jumped for joy.” New Eye for Soldiers.

Another case in which Wood has salved human wreckage is that' of Driver Fergusson, a member of the Canadian field artillery, who was hideously wounded at Ypres on April 25, 1915. A piece of shell carried away his right eye entirely, and as the surgical report professionally put it, “the surrounding structures.” In the ordinary way, there would have been nothing to fix an artificial eye “to,” and, as in the case of Trooper Everitt, his disfigurement was so appalling to behold that it is doubtful of he ever could have taken up his old trade, which was that of a machinist.

Now with the upper part of his right cheek restored, and what appear to be two perfectly good eyes beaming at you from behind spectacles, this youngster not only.will be able to earn his living hereafter, but is going to get married, and the gratitude of his fiancee to Derwent Wood is only surpassed by his own. These are the two worst cases with which the s'culptor has yet had to deal, but others in which he has been equally successful are those of Private Harper of the King’s Royal rifles, who also lost most of his nose and the biggest part of his cheekbone; Lance Corporal Davis of the Australian imperial

forces, who was minus an eye and part of his cheek, and a British private, whose left cheek and nose were frightfully torn by a shrapnel bullet. All these men will now be able to follow their own trades, instead of having to exist, shunned by all save the most stoical of their fellows, on the princely pension of 25 shillings ($6) a week, which is all that their country can afford to pay in cases of “total incapacity.” Wood’s War Service. Soon after the beginning of the war Col. Bruce Porter of the Royal Army Medical corps made a speech to the members of the Chelsea Arts club, of which Derwent Wood is a member. The colonel asked his hearers to make a sacrifice of their art, and if they were too old to fight to accept the lowest service in the ranks of the R, A. M. C. A goodly number of the Chelsea artists enlisted in the R. A. M. C. forthwith, and among them was Derwent Wood. At forty-four he is not available for active service. His father came from Harrisburg, Pa., married an Englishwoman and settled down at Keswick, in Cumberland, where Derwent Wood was born.

He began his artistic career at Karlsruhe, later returning to England, and becoming a student at the Royal academy. There he won the gold medal and the traveling scholarship,which took him for some time to Italy. He afterward became assistant to Thomas Brock, R. A., one of the most famous of British sculptors. Honors were awarded him at the Paris salon, and four years ago he was made an associate of the Royal academy. Examples of his statuary are in the possession pf Henry Phipps, of his son, J. Phipps of Westbury, L. 1., and several other well-known American collectors.

Moved to Aid Wounded. Having joined the R. A. M. C. as an ordinary private Wood was sent out to a London military hospital. It iB one of the biggest in the metropolis, with more than 1,500 beds. At the beginning the new orderly’s duties were not of an exalted nature, one of them being to assist in rolling a new asphalt path. In a few days, however, the sculptor was drafted into the wards, where he began by taking plaster casts of damaged limbs. He soon became a master of splints. And in the course of his work he saw the saddest sights of the war, the men with the mutilated faces.

Moved to intense compassion, Derwent Wood went to his colonel one day and said: “Let me see what I can do for these poor fellows. I believe that I can do something anyway.” The officer consented gladly. “I spent months in experiments,” said Wood, “before I undertook my first case. This was in December last, my patient being Trooper Everitt. My ‘masks,’ as we call them, consist of plates of thin copper, silvered and then painted to match the hue of the patient’s skin. They are light to wear, they fit like gloves and the men declare that they give no discomfort whatever. Yes, they are intended to be removed at night, exactly like a set of false teeth, and they are easily cleaned with a little potato juice. Most of them can be kept in place by means of ‘ether gum,’ such as actors use, but in cases of artificial eyes and noses, I prefer to ‘build’ them on to spectacles, which assist to keep them in place and which themselves are held firm by means of a couple of small straps at the back. Plaster Mold Made. “In the beginning a plaster mold of the face is secured. This is dried and a clay or plasticine ‘squeeze’ is obtained from the mold, giving a positive model of the patient’s dressed wound and the surrounding healthy tissues; this is fixed to a board on a jjnodeling stand and a sitting from the patient with the undressed wound is obtained.

“Havingxjompleted my model I proceed to cast It, and procure the plaster positive of the wound and Its surrounding structures.. Another sitting is had and the portions which are to be hidden eventually by the metal plate are modeled in clay or wax, the edges being blended to the uninjured portions of the face, thus effectively masking any trace of wounds. This is once more molded in plaster, and* the edge of the proposed plate being marked on the negative, a cast is obtained, edges are trimmed to marking and the model is ready to have the artificial eye fitted to the lids. “The plaster eyeball is dug out, the

requisite thickness of lids is carefully worked down, the glass eye placed in position and the edges of the lids made good with thin The model is then taken to the electrotyper, where an exact reproduction by galvanoplastic deposit is made in thin virgin copper. The final sittings are devoted to the pigmentation of the plate. “I have found a thin coating of cream-colored bath enamel a good preparation for flesh color matching. Should the patient have a shihy skin this is easily obtained by varnish rubbed down to match it. I have tried false hair on eyelids and eyebrows — they will not stand the weather —and have adopted tinfoil split with scissors and soldered into lids for the eye, and for the eyebrows pigment applied to the modeled forms.” Lieutenant Wood declared that the American made artificial limbs were by far the best in the world, and spoke admiringly of the work that is being done at Roehampton by Americans in the way of equipping armless and legless soldiers.