Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey, Brainstuff,
Speaker 1: luring Vogel bomb here. What could you do to help
Speaker 1: those fighting in a brutal war? At some point in history,
Speaker 1: whole nations of individuals have had to ask themselves that question.
Speaker 1: They've rationed food and supplies, restructured their careers, nursed the
Speaker 1: wounded soldiers themselves, and monitored their own everyday speech. During
Speaker 1: World War One, an American woman named Anna Colwyn Ladd
Speaker 1: used her skills as an artist to change the lives
Speaker 1: of men disfigured in the war. World War One was
Speaker 1: fought differently from any war that preceded it. The twentieth
Speaker 1: century brought with it the fruits of the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: which in this case included machine guns. Soldiers were often
Speaker 1: dodging a hailstorm of bullets rather than single shots, along
Speaker 1: with artillery which involved lots and lots of shrapnel. Around
Speaker 1: twenty one million men were injured in the war, and
Speaker 1: some of them lost chins, noses, lips, and cheekbones, not
Speaker 1: surprising since trench warfare involved a lot of looking up
Speaker 1: over the edge of the trench to see if the
Speaker 1: coast was clear. Facial reconstruction surgery was a brand new
Speaker 1: technology at this time, and though some of its practitioners
Speaker 1: had experience restoring or recreating faces on a small scale,
Speaker 1: these surgeons were suddenly presented with the then impossible task
Speaker 1: of reconstructing entire faces. The men would survive, but the
Speaker 1: trauma of such damage was grim. Anna Coleman Lad was
Speaker 1: an American sculptor from Boston who moved to France during
Speaker 1: World War One so that her husband could take a
Speaker 1: position with the Red Cross. After learning about the plight
Speaker 1: of these men, she corresponded with English sculptor Francis derwent Wood,
Speaker 1: the founder of the Tin Noses Shop in London, where
Speaker 1: he made tin masks for soldiers with facial mutilations. Then,
Speaker 1: with the help of the Red Cross, Lad set up
Speaker 1: her own studio in Paris, called the Studio for Portrait Masks.
Speaker 1: Lad turned out to have a real gift for crafting
Speaker 1: portrait masks, precursors to today's facial prostheses. The masks were
Speaker 1: created to cover just the damaged portion of the soldier's face,
Speaker 1: which could of course, sometimes include the entire face. Lad's
Speaker 1: work was lauded as the best of its kind, and
Speaker 1: each mask took months to produce. In order to create
Speaker 1: a mask that resembled each man's pre war face as
Speaker 1: closely as possible, Lad first required photos of the original face,
Speaker 1: and after the wounds from the injury and any subsequent
Speaker 1: surgery healed completely, she and her team got to work.
Speaker 1: She took a plaster cast of the entire face and
Speaker 1: from there made squeezes, clay or plast seen copies of
Speaker 1: the face on which Lad could base her portrait recreation work.
Speaker 1: The masks themselves were made from very thin gall of
Speaker 1: anized copper, about the thickness of the cover of a paperback,
Speaker 1: and they were usually held in place with spectacles. Lad
Speaker 1: painted each mask with enamel while the man was wearing
Speaker 1: it so she could get the best possible skin tone match.
Speaker 1: Facial hair like mustaches, eyelashes, and eyebrows were added at
Speaker 1: the end with real hair. Although lad Studio was only
Speaker 1: open for a year, she and her four assistants created
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty five masks which changed the lives
Speaker 1: of her clients. They reported being better able to live
Speaker 1: with their families, get jobs, and feel as if they belonged,
Speaker 1: rather than hiding away feeling monstrous in a veteran's home.
Speaker 1: Lad was a pioneer in facial prosthetics, and her results
Speaker 1: were remarkable, even though the masks she made were fragile
Speaker 1: and easily battered, and they didn't restore movement and function
Speaker 1: to the face. These days, facial pross theses are used
Speaker 1: in situations in which surgical reconstruction isn't technically possible isn't
Speaker 1: recommended for the patient for other reasons. For the article,
Speaker 1: this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with
Speaker 1: one Garcia, an anaplastologist at the Johns Hopkins Carnegie Center
Speaker 1: for Surgical Innovation. He said there are many reasons why
Speaker 1: a patient cannot have a surgical option offered to them.
Speaker 1: A person missing an eye and eyelids cannot have this reconstructed.
Speaker 1: Cancer patients who undergo radiation therapy do not heal well.
Speaker 1: The surgical reconstruction of the ear and nose is very
Speaker 1: delicate surgery, oftentimes leading to a poor aesthetic outcome, even
Speaker 1: in the hands of a skilled surgeon. Modern anaplastologists still
Speaker 1: work with plaster in paint, but they use modern dental
Speaker 1: materials like resin daie stone, an ultra strong form of
Speaker 1: gypsum that behaves a lot like plaster along with paints
Speaker 1: mixed with silicone. Garcia said, unlike the painted, rigid masks
Speaker 1: made of copper that Lad made, we generally sculpt the
Speaker 1: prosthetic device in wax before the stone mold is made
Speaker 1: to cast a saw flush like silicone prosthesis. These days,
Speaker 1: we used advanced digital technologies such as surface scanning, digital sculpting,
Speaker 1: and three D printing, and implants in the form of
Speaker 1: titanium screws, similar but shorter than dental implants. These screws
Speaker 1: are placed into the bone by a surgeon and can
Speaker 1: be used to hold the prosthesis in place. So nobody's
Speaker 1: holding their prosthesis on by dangling it from spectacles anymore.
Speaker 1: But Lad paved the way for a lot of the
Speaker 1: good work anaplastologists do today, and the outcome is largely
Speaker 1: the same. Garcia said. The work of the anoplastologists allows
Speaker 1: patients to get back to their work, family, friends, and
Speaker 1: activities they enjoy. It allows them to move forward with
Speaker 1: their lives with a renewed sense of normalcy, albeit a
Speaker 1: new normal. Hopefully the work goes undetected. However, the main
Speaker 1: goal is to help the patient move from an isolated
Speaker 1: and perhaps ostracized state to one where they can once
Speaker 1: again engage others. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: how a lone sculptor gave New Faces to injured soldiers
Speaker 1: of World War One on how stuff works dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Jesslyn Shield. Brain Stuff is production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts, in
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio is at the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.