Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 185, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1916 — GIVES PART OF LEG TO ANOTHER [ARTICLE]

GIVES PART OF LEG TO ANOTHER

Heroic French Soldier Calmly Helps Maimed Fellow ___ ... Hero. EACH WOUNDED IN THE LEG Surgeons Are Watching a Remarkable Operation In Great Hospital In Paris—Bound Like Siamese Twine. Paris. —One of the most remarkable surgical operations onr record is now being performed at the Grand Palais, the massive building usually used for the annual Salon, but now transformed into a vast hospital. Here two soldiers lie side by side, bound together like Siamese twins) while a large portion of the leg of one of them is being slowly transferred into the leg of the other one. Noted surgeons gather about, watching the slow progress, which they regard as marvelous both from a surgical standpoint and from the sentimental, one soldier calmly giving day by day part of his body to a fellow hero. Lie on Operating Table. # The two men lie on their backs on a large operating table. They lie in opposite directions, the head of one near the feet of the. other, like the figures on playing cards. They are among the most seriously wounded of the more youthful soldiers —one is twenty-six and the other twenty-three years old. The younger, Rousselot, was wounded in the leg at the battle of Morhange In the early d&ys of the war. He was taken a prisoner to Germany, where the surgeons say he did not receive intelligent attention. Brought back here last September, It was necessary to perform a second operation to lengthen his leg 14 centimeters (about five and a half inches). But after the extension was peformed, there was still a lack of bony matter between the two portions of the broken femur. Surgeons Get an Idea. The other soldier, Tillette, an artillery man, was seriously wounded in the leg two months ago In the desperate fight over Fort Douaumont. In a field operation his leg was amputated above the knee. Later It was found that a second operation was necessary In order to shorten the leg by some centimeters. It was at this point that the surgeons concluded that, the one who needed the shortened leg could give up this portion to the soldier who needed the longer leg. Now, after some weeks, the two soldiers lie there on their backs, the right thigh of Rousselot against the left thigh of Tillette, bound together with the same surgical bandages so as to prevent the slightest shifting of the operated parts, until the phenomenon of transferring one leg to the other is accomplished.