Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles to be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. The It's so
Speaker 1: I don't know what addition this is. It's a good one, though,
Speaker 1: I predict. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't know much about this,
Speaker 1: so I was when I found out. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is this is right up our alley. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: is UM part of what's very frequently called UM a
Speaker 1: hidden history of World War One. This is not something
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have known about for very long,
Speaker 1: although it seems to be picking up kind of academic interests.
Speaker 1: But this idea of people who were disfigured in the
Speaker 1: war UM facial suffered facial disfigurements UM. And I should
Speaker 1: I say, I want to say now before at the
Speaker 1: outset UM facial differences is the preferred term. And there's
Speaker 1: like a whole there's a whole sea change going on
Speaker 1: in perception UM and you know, just being out there
Speaker 1: with facial differences, it's like the antithesis of what we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about. So hats off to that, um.
Speaker 1: But this was a time when there was a huge
Speaker 1: sudden uptick in facial disfigurements is what they call them,
Speaker 1: from being at war. Yeah, I mean World War One
Speaker 1: was a brand new war. Uh. The Industrial Revolution brought
Speaker 1: on new horrific ways to kill people, like the machine gun.
Speaker 1: The machine gun uh in trench warfare, they point out
Speaker 1: and in both of these articles that I read that, UM, people,
Speaker 1: the soldiers at the time still didn't have a full
Speaker 1: understanding of just what machine gun meant, and that you
Speaker 1: don't have time to go pook your head above the
Speaker 1: trench and look real quick, like those bullets are faster
Speaker 1: than you, right, and you're not dodging one bullet. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of them comings. Maybe you get out of
Speaker 1: the way of one, but there's three more headed your
Speaker 1: way to. Yeah, so there wasn't I mean, it sounds
Speaker 1: weird to think of that now, but there was not
Speaker 1: that full understanding, and a lot of men in World
Speaker 1: War One had a lot of bad things happened to
Speaker 1: their face. Yeah. So not just from machine gun fire,
Speaker 1: from sticking their head up above a trench, but also
Speaker 1: from those mortar shells they've been around for a little while.
Speaker 1: But they just prior to World War One, had really
Speaker 1: been perfected into like really destructive instruments. Um, they blew
Speaker 1: up and they created a totally different type of wound
Speaker 1: than a bullet hole does because they're jagged pieces of metal, iron, steel,
Speaker 1: and they could say, tear your lower jaw completely off, um,
Speaker 1: take off half of your face like they just did
Speaker 1: all sorts of really weird, horrible things. And that that
Speaker 1: advancement in UM weaponry, I guess you'd call it, combined
Speaker 1: with some advancements in UM battlefield emergency medicine, so that
Speaker 1: saving lives. Yeah, So that there were worse wounds than
Speaker 1: ever before, but the potential of surviving a wound like
Speaker 1: that was also greater than ever before, which culminated in
Speaker 1: a huge uptick in people who whose faces had been
Speaker 1: disfigured by either bullets or shrapnel. UM, more than anyone
Speaker 1: had ever seen before. And as far as numbers went. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of doctors in these articles that
Speaker 1: have quotes, and one of them talked about like, you
Speaker 1: don't we didn't see a broken bone. We saw bones
Speaker 1: that were just shattered UM. At the time, I think
Speaker 1: another quote talked about the weaponry was outpacing medicine um
Speaker 1: and like you said, they would may be able to
Speaker 1: save lives more, but it was outpacing like, well, now,
Speaker 1: what do we do right? We don't have the means
Speaker 1: to do facial reconstruction like they will in the future.
Speaker 1: And in a very weird but also really real way,
Speaker 1: World War One pushed reconstructive surgery to to advance by
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds, just by all of a sudden having
Speaker 1: a bunch of people to practice on and trying new
Speaker 1: techniques on, but also having to do that all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, rather than slowly taking your time.
Speaker 1: It was like, no, you need to figure this out now.
Speaker 1: And a lot of surgical techniques advance. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people point to World War One as like kind
Speaker 1: of the dividing line between anything that came before as
Speaker 1: far as plastic surgery goes, and modern plastic surgery really
Speaker 1: started in World War One. But people have been doing
Speaker 1: stuff as far as plastic surgery goes for more than
Speaker 1: a thousand years before World World War One, or no,
Speaker 1: about almost three thousand years, hundred years at least. That's
Speaker 1: that's as far as I'm going I'm the worst at
Speaker 1: figuring out Uh, time spans over centuries, as you know.
Speaker 1: That's why I never do it. Um, you always leave it.
Speaker 1: I usually just say the year and you're like, you
Speaker 1: can figure it out how long ago that was? Um?
Speaker 1: But about six is when we have evidence on paper
Speaker 1: or papyri peppery of actual repairing things on the face
Speaker 1: like that and suturing things on the face. Um. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I believe there was a Hindu doctor named Sasarata who
Speaker 1: developed the first rhino plasty. Yeah, because in India, especially
Speaker 1: during this time, like I think this is about this
Speaker 1: is five BC, so about years ago. Um, if you
Speaker 1: were caught stealing, you would get your nose lopped off.
Speaker 1: You could also get it lopped off in war and
Speaker 1: happened frequently enough that it was an Indian doctor at
Speaker 1: that time who who created the technique of like building
Speaker 1: a new nose. Uh. Your nose could also just fall off.
Speaker 1: If it was the seventeen hundreds and you had syphilis, yes,
Speaker 1: can you imagine something like that? No, syphilis sounds awful.
Speaker 1: I mean it would drive you in crazy to attack
Speaker 1: your spine. But there were also these necrotic lesions called
Speaker 1: gummos her gummas then an awful name for something that
Speaker 1: eats your face away, a gumma. Oh I got a
Speaker 1: new gumma today. Look at this thing, um. But it
Speaker 1: would eat your nose clear off, It would eat your
Speaker 1: eye out of its socket, It would eat your mouth away. Um.
Speaker 1: And the prevalence of syphilis actually was something that kind
Speaker 1: of pushed um plastic surgery along as well. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: started experimenting with skin grafting U in the early eighteen hundreds. Um.
Speaker 1: The turn plastic surgery didn't actually come about until the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, but they were you know, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: the results were great, but they you know, they were
Speaker 1: leading the way all over the world with some things
Speaker 1: like skin graphs and plastic surgery. Very rudimentary and crude,
Speaker 1: but it did pave the way. Yeah, they were figuring
Speaker 1: out techniques, but again they didn't have they didn't have
Speaker 1: something like World War One to push things for. They
Speaker 1: had syphilis, which is something um. But the they had
Speaker 1: like cleft palates was one that was a surgery that
Speaker 1: that had been not perfected or anything like that, but
Speaker 1: it was a surgery you'd frequently see if you were
Speaker 1: a surgeon you might be asked to do. But um,
Speaker 1: World War One again just brought on a drove of
Speaker 1: totally different cases that no one had ever seen before.
Speaker 1: So they had to get clever. And there were a
Speaker 1: couple of people who kind of came to the fore
Speaker 1: just as far as the plastic surgery went. There was
Speaker 1: a guy from New Zealand named Gillies. What was his
Speaker 1: first name, Chuck Mickey, You know I was going to
Speaker 1: say that right now. His name was Sir Harold Gillies. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were a few people there were, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about all of them kind of as we go here,
Speaker 1: but Sir Harold Gillies. Uh, there was a gentleman name
Speaker 1: Francis Derwent Would and then there was a woman named
Speaker 1: Anna Coleman Lad and they all contributed greatly to this
Speaker 1: new cause of this really really sad cause of these
Speaker 1: men coming home with these really terrible things that have
Speaker 1: happened to their face. And not only like I'm shunned
Speaker 1: by society, but like my kids can't look at me,
Speaker 1: My wife wants to leave me, and some of these
Speaker 1: soldiers are like and she rightfully should want to leave me,
Speaker 1: Like how can she even look at me, and it
Speaker 1: was just such an awful thing to have to live with.
Speaker 1: And they all chipped into um I mean I call
Speaker 1: them war masks basically like these wound masks. And they
Speaker 1: would make and if you see the pictures of these,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. They these before and after photos. They would
Speaker 1: make masks and we'll get into the nitty gritty, but
Speaker 1: essentially masks to cover these what what they called then disfigurements,
Speaker 1: whether it was a missing I a missing nose, the
Speaker 1: lower half of your jaw, so it wouldn't be something
Speaker 1: you wore over your entire face, it would just be
Speaker 1: the part that they needed. Right. So initially it was um, okay,
Speaker 1: we can advance plastic surgery. And that's where Harold Gillies
Speaker 1: came in. He founded a hospital at sid Cup, which
Speaker 1: is outside of London from what I understand, and it
Speaker 1: was um that was where you would go if you
Speaker 1: were British to get your to get plastic surgery. And
Speaker 1: you could go stay there for like two years basically
Speaker 1: getting a series of surgery and a series of surgery
Speaker 1: just one after the other, um recovering new surgery, recovering
Speaker 1: new surgery. And if they couldn't quite do it. Um,
Speaker 1: they would send you over to Francis de Wentwood. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a second, But there were there were
Speaker 1: limits to plastic surgery. And when plastic surgery reached its limits,
Speaker 1: and I guess the soldier's face was still uh disfigured
Speaker 1: to the point where he didn't feel like he could
Speaker 1: return to society, or society was like, damn, you stay
Speaker 1: over there. Then Francis der went would an anneet Anna
Speaker 1: Coleman lad came into play. Yeah, he wrote, Gillies wrote
Speaker 1: of and he he pioneered a lot of work that
Speaker 1: they still say is still important to modern plastic surgery. UM.
Speaker 1: And he ended up writing a book and he he
Speaker 1: was the guy that said, you know, before this, we
Speaker 1: were doing things like cleft palates, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden we were getting two thousand patients a day coming
Speaker 1: in with the most horrific injuries you could imagine. And
Speaker 1: he ended up writing a book called A Plastic Surgery
Speaker 1: of the Face. And if you look at this book,
Speaker 1: and this article rightfully points out it's um, it really
Speaker 1: demonstrates how far they had come and what they were
Speaker 1: able to do, but also what they weren't able to
Speaker 1: do at all at the same time. Yeah, like their
Speaker 1: limitations even though he was doing for the time really
Speaker 1: really advanced work. Yeah, I mean stuff we're like you
Speaker 1: cut out a piece of skin and so it to
Speaker 1: another part of your skin so that there's blood flow,
Speaker 1: and then you cut off where it was originally connected
Speaker 1: and then so that part down and basically you just
Speaker 1: inchworm skin down the face to where you want it.
Speaker 1: Like they were figuring out things like you have to
Speaker 1: keep it a blood supply going or else it's gonna
Speaker 1: just rot and fall off, like like really advanced stuff.
Speaker 1: And like in a lot of cases, they they were
Speaker 1: able to restore the soldier's face basically back to or
Speaker 1: some close simularity similarity to what it was prior to
Speaker 1: the injury. But again there were plenty of them where
Speaker 1: it was just like, we can't do anything for you, man,
Speaker 1: And that's when they would go that. It was when
Speaker 1: those cases started to build up, Francis to Wentwood and
Speaker 1: Anna Coleman lad stepped in. So we take a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break right now. So one
Speaker 1: thing I want to mention real quick is I don't
Speaker 1: think we talked about was outside sid Cup or in
Speaker 1: Sidcup where Gillies had his hospital. Uh, they had there
Speaker 1: were so many men coming through there. They had in
Speaker 1: the town they had certain benches painted were they painted blue? Uh?
Speaker 1: And if there was a bench painted blue, it was
Speaker 1: sort of a I guess you are, lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, of warning to society, like here's where these
Speaker 1: patients will be sitting, and you might want to not
Speaker 1: sit there and look at them. Right. It was like
Speaker 1: a horrible thing to do, but it was just sort
Speaker 1: of emblematic of like what these men had to go through,
Speaker 1: like children terrified in public of these people, Like they
Speaker 1: wouldn't put mirrors in these hospitals. Well yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was supposedly it was an enormous shock to see yourself.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine it, Like I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: it what it would be like to see your face
Speaker 1: like missing major features because and this was a recurring
Speaker 1: theme that I saw in a lot of the um
Speaker 1: like academic coverage of this is like, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: what these people were doing, it was like really great
Speaker 1: and noble and they were trying to help these people
Speaker 1: regain their identity. But at the other it's kind of like, um,
Speaker 1: what does it say about society that, like these people
Speaker 1: couldn't come back because they were missing like an eye
Speaker 1: or a mouth or or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like stay in your house, like we don't. I
Speaker 1: don't want my kid to see this second thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a complicated thing going on here. It's complex. It's
Speaker 1: not just cut and dry like that was right. This
Speaker 1: guy was missing a face. Gotta have a face. They
Speaker 1: made him a mask to cover up his deformity. Um,
Speaker 1: it was. There's more to it than that, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean we're at a place now where we're making
Speaker 1: great strides and acceptance of of stuff like this. But
Speaker 1: imagine it's still bad. Imagine what it was like back then.
Speaker 1: Have you seen that movie Wonder? No, it's so good?
Speaker 1: What is it? So sweet? It's like put a little
Speaker 1: boy with facial differences and like him going from home
Speaker 1: school to school year. Um, it's heartbreakingly sweet. Owen Wilson's
Speaker 1: dad doing his own Wilson think Julie Roberts plays his
Speaker 1: Mom's great. It's a great movie we're seeing. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a whole movement go going on. I
Speaker 1: follow this this account. I think there might be British
Speaker 1: called changing faces, and they're all just like out, I'm proud,
Speaker 1: like this is my face, Like I'm sorry, I'm I
Speaker 1: can't do anything about it. I'm not gonna do anything
Speaker 1: about it. Um, you know, let's let's move from there.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's neat. It's neat to see just that.
Speaker 1: That change a huge shift from hugo stay over here
Speaker 1: out of society, Like society doesn't really feel like it
Speaker 1: can ask that of people any longer, whereas before it
Speaker 1: was like my wife can't even look at me. She's
Speaker 1: repulsed by me, and she she deserves to be. That's
Speaker 1: a huge change, you know, and I think that's wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: and it was also at the same time where you
Speaker 1: would uh, where Kennedy would get lobotomized and stuffed in
Speaker 1: a a insane asylum forever never to be talked about again,
Speaker 1: or you know, people committed family members, like a dark
Speaker 1: time for humanity. Yes, and we're just now coming out
Speaker 1: of it a little bit. Well, we we've come a
Speaker 1: long way since then, obviously, but it's just amazing how
Speaker 1: many I don't know how much of the stuff still
Speaker 1: goes on. Sad Should we talk about the masks. So
Speaker 1: if if Harold Gillies couldn't do anything for you, um,
Speaker 1: you would move on to Francis derwent Wood, who was
Speaker 1: an artiste if there ever was one. Yes, So he
Speaker 1: had a shop, uh called the Tin Knows a Shop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't call it that, he didn't, I don't know.
Speaker 1: He may have facetiously, but it was the Tommy's the
Speaker 1: wounded British soldiers who called it that. Yeah, t I
Speaker 1: n as in you don't have a nose, here's one
Speaker 1: made of tin. So yeah, they called it the Tin
Speaker 1: Knows a Shop. Yeah, but technical. But the official name
Speaker 1: was the Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department. Yes, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was founded by Francis to White would who um
Speaker 1: he was, like I said, he was an artist and
Speaker 1: he um and enlisted as a private in the medical
Speaker 1: core at age forty four, Yeah, which is obviously, especially
Speaker 1: back then, kind of old to do something like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: He found pretty quickly that he didn't get a great duty.
Speaker 1: He was, um he described as errand boy chores and
Speaker 1: he had a knack though. He was an artist, so
Speaker 1: he had a knack for coming up with some pretty
Speaker 1: ingenious things. At first it was splints that were apparently
Speaker 1: pretty creative and sophisticated. Then those chattering teeth that just
Speaker 1: made everybody laugh because we're his Why was that everything?
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that supposed to be funny? I guess,
Speaker 1: look at those teeth chatter seventies, I guess. So I
Speaker 1: was in the pet rock, which, by the way, I
Speaker 1: want to do a show on that. Is there shows
Speaker 1: worth of material or is that like a short stuff?
Speaker 1: Do you think? I don't know, we'll find out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a nice tease. Um, maybe we'll come up with
Speaker 1: the third podcast. It is called Somewhere in Between Stuff
Speaker 1: exactly twenty three minutes exactly. Um, so, yeah, he was
Speaker 1: doing Aaron Boy stuff. Had a lot of creativity. I
Speaker 1: guess he caught the eye of the people there and
Speaker 1: as an artist they said, you know what, you could
Speaker 1: actually be very useful and constructing this kind of new idea.
Speaker 1: Which are these uh these and again that's what they
Speaker 1: call them back then, like disfigurement masks. Right, they had stuff.
Speaker 1: They had prosthetics before facial prosthetics, but they were made
Speaker 1: of rubber. They weren't very good they aesthetically they were
Speaker 1: they were utilitarian. They were They were meant to maybe
Speaker 1: help you chew again if you were missing your lower jaw,
Speaker 1: um whatever. They were meant to solve the problem of
Speaker 1: the missing function. This is the opposite of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is cosmetic. I guess you would call very much
Speaker 1: so aesthetic cosmetic. Francis to Wentwood said like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to restore function. That's not the point
Speaker 1: of what I'm doing. Um, what I'm doing is restoring identity.
Speaker 1: Somebody put it that he was making portraits out of
Speaker 1: metal they called them portrait masks, right, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: putting them on to the person to to basically restore
Speaker 1: their look back to what it was pre war. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they were also very intent at at Wood's shop
Speaker 1: of um treating these men with dignity and respect um too.
Speaker 1: I think one of the nurses even talked about how
Speaker 1: beautiful a face without a nose was. She was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Kathleen Scott, who was the widow of Robert Scott,
Speaker 1: Robert Falcon Scott, who died in Antarctica on an expedition.
Speaker 1: But she was a she was a sculptor who helped
Speaker 1: out And it's like these are people still and they're
Speaker 1: beautiful in their own way. Yeah. Her quote was men
Speaker 1: without noses are very beauty full, like antique marbles, which
Speaker 1: I have seen antique marbles all the time, so you
Speaker 1: know exactly what she meant. They also said it would
Speaker 1: shop to always look a man straight in the face. Remember,
Speaker 1: he's watching your face to see how you're going to react.
Speaker 1: So it started when they first would come in there
Speaker 1: with being treated like a human being, which really is great.
Speaker 1: So uh. He would establish his unit in March nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: and by June of the following year he appeared in
Speaker 1: the Lancet, the great legendary British medical journal that's still
Speaker 1: around today. And then eventually at the end towards the
Speaker 1: end of nineteen seventeen, there was a Boston based sculptor
Speaker 1: in the United States, obviously in her previously to being married.
Speaker 1: She was Anna Coleman Watts, and she was very talented
Speaker 1: as a sculptor and eventually married a man named Maynard
Speaker 1: lad who was a physician, and he moved to France
Speaker 1: with him because he got a gig with the Red Cross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like the injured Children's core leader something like that.
Speaker 1: Man um and yeah. So they moved to France and
Speaker 1: she found out what Francister went Wood was doing back
Speaker 1: in England and she's like, I'm going to try that here.
Speaker 1: So with the Red Cross she set up something called
Speaker 1: the Um Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris in the
Speaker 1: Latin Quarter and she went to work doing the same thing. Again,
Speaker 1: this is all pioneering stuff, Like these people were making
Speaker 1: this up as they went along. There were a couple
Speaker 1: of trained sculptors who turned during the war, turned their
Speaker 1: talents to restoring facial identity to men whose faces have
Speaker 1: been disfigured by shrapnelan bullets. Yeah, and by all accounts, Um,
Speaker 1: the lad Studio was very much the same way of
Speaker 1: like trying to set them up for success as humans
Speaker 1: and treating them with dignity or place in the Latin
Speaker 1: Quarter was very beautiful. It was described as a large,
Speaker 1: bright studio Uh, plants and ivy on the walls and
Speaker 1: flowers everywhere, and she wanted to make it like I
Speaker 1: think it's a it's significant that these were artists and
Speaker 1: not from the medical establishment, because they wanted to set
Speaker 1: up these beautiful places for these men to come and
Speaker 1: feel good about what's going on there? And I think
Speaker 1: at the time, like hospitals were grim and any kind
Speaker 1: of treatment you got was just I mean, we've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about old medicine. It was not a sunny
Speaker 1: experience in any way. Then those horrid like wicker wheelchairs
Speaker 1: that are the creepiest things anyone's ever seen. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Lad tried to set up a really lovely, cheery, welcoming
Speaker 1: space for her patients to come in, which is just great.
Speaker 1: And there's news real footage from that era of Lad
Speaker 1: working in her studio with one of her patient clients.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you'd all him, but I think
Speaker 1: he's missing a substantial part of his lower face, maybe
Speaker 1: his lower jaw. And she attaches the prosthetic the mask
Speaker 1: and like tucks it behind his ears, like it hangs
Speaker 1: on behind his ears right, and um, it's it's the
Speaker 1: neatest thing. Like he smiles, like he goes from not
Speaker 1: sad but neutral, but then all of a sudden he
Speaker 1: smiles and it's like it was a warm, genuine smile. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's really moving because you can read about it.
Speaker 1: It's like we did all you want and like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's this quote from this person, and this person said
Speaker 1: this was an amazing thing too. And here's a letter
Speaker 1: of somebody. We're seeing that guy smile when when um,
Speaker 1: when Anna Coleman lab puts the prosthetic on his face,
Speaker 1: says it all like all comes into to focus what
Speaker 1: everybody in the articles are talking about. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of great before and after photos of
Speaker 1: the end. We'll get in, you know, in a few
Speaker 1: minutes on how what they made these things. But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of great before and after photos. And
Speaker 1: when you look at these because initially in today's in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, is you think about, well, these people
Speaker 1: had a horrific thing happened to their face, and so
Speaker 1: now they wear a mask like attached by either eyeglasses
Speaker 1: or hooked over their ears to to mesh with the
Speaker 1: rest of their face. And your first thought is like,
Speaker 1: how unbelievable did that look? But when you look at
Speaker 1: these photos, they look really good. And you can only
Speaker 1: imagine that just that sense of uh normalcy for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, meant so much to these men,
Speaker 1: even covering it up, not fixing it cover to to
Speaker 1: blend in, Yeah, I think is what they were looking
Speaker 1: for pretty extraordinary. You want to take another break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. We're gonna take a break, everybody. We
Speaker 1: just decided, I don't know if you heard or not,
Speaker 1: and here we go. All right, So let's talk about
Speaker 1: how these masks were made. Again. They were revolutionary. These
Speaker 1: people were making it up as they were going along. Um,
Speaker 1: but they hit upon it pretty well right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. And the big one of the big differences
Speaker 1: was that these weren't rubber prosthetics that were meant to
Speaker 1: restore function. They were metal masks that were meant to
Speaker 1: restore identity. Yeah, and a little dignity maybe. Um. So
Speaker 1: the first thing would happen is LAD or you know
Speaker 1: whoever is working on this, because they all LAD and
Speaker 1: would both had people they worked with on their teams.
Speaker 1: So the first thing they would do is get a
Speaker 1: photo obviously more than one photo of pre war and
Speaker 1: what they look like. Because the whole thing is, I
Speaker 1: don't want to make you look like you looked before,
Speaker 1: not just well let me just fashion you a nose.
Speaker 1: It's like, I want your nose to look like your
Speaker 1: old nose. And so they would get these photos that
Speaker 1: the people, the patients and soldiers would have to heal
Speaker 1: completely in order to undergo this process at all. Like
Speaker 1: it's not the kind of thing they could do, you know,
Speaker 1: as they're healing. Uh. And so they made a plaster cast,
Speaker 1: and then after that they would make what's called a squeeze,
Speaker 1: which is like a clay version of that cast. And
Speaker 1: then eventually that would end up in a galvanized copper
Speaker 1: mask about the thickness of like a playing card, right,
Speaker 1: And the plaster cast that they would make of your
Speaker 1: face was supposedly just an awful, awful process, Like they
Speaker 1: would give you a little straw to put in your
Speaker 1: mouth and like that's how you breathe for as long
Speaker 1: as they were they took to make the plaster cast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad. It would be bad anyway, but after
Speaker 1: you've suffered that trauma right to your face, imagine anything
Speaker 1: near or around your face would be really uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And let's talk about that what led up to that.
Speaker 1: First of all, you were shot in the face or
Speaker 1: hit was trapnel in the face. Sometimes you would be
Speaker 1: laying there if you went down in no man's land
Speaker 1: for hours days before somebody came and got you. You
Speaker 1: were taken to a Field Hospital and then flown over
Speaker 1: to England or driven over to England or by boat.
Speaker 1: Be quiet, everybody, um or taken to Paris um and
Speaker 1: you underwent possibly two years of surgical reconstruction, and finally,
Speaker 1: once all your surgeries were healed, you would find yourself
Speaker 1: in Mrs Ladd's studio or Francister went Wood studio getting
Speaker 1: plaster coated over your disfigured face, holding a little straw
Speaker 1: in your mouth. So, yeah, it was. It was probably
Speaker 1: not the greatest thing that they've ever experienced. It was
Speaker 1: probably tied for first with a couple of those other
Speaker 1: ones along the way for being terrible. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: you said, this is after um, noble but not great
Speaker 1: result attempts at you know, doing it the plastic surgery way.
Speaker 1: So these people are desperate there. I mean, if you've
Speaker 1: gone in there to get a portrait mask, you're that's
Speaker 1: your last stop to try and resume, you know, your
Speaker 1: previous life. Basically suppose as you can get to it.
Speaker 1: All right, So if you had facial hair, if you
Speaker 1: had a mustache, which a lot of men did back then, um,
Speaker 1: they would use real hair and add that into the mask. Her.
Speaker 1: I think it took her about a month to make
Speaker 1: one of these. Yeah. I don't know if you said
Speaker 1: or not, but she was credited as by far being
Speaker 1: the better artist, Like the result was really talented, much
Speaker 1: better coming out of the Lad studio than the Woods studio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was faster and more prolific. Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: a lot more. I think he served a lot more patients. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the end, I believe her shop was only up
Speaker 1: in about a year and with four assistants, created a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty five man asks, which UM, again in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, is not very many people,
Speaker 1: but changed all of those lives, you know. So they
Speaker 1: so they're from the plaster cast. You said they made
Speaker 1: a squeeze. The cast is a negative, the squeeze is
Speaker 1: a positive. And then they would use the squeezes the
Speaker 1: model for making the cast that or the mask that
Speaker 1: they needed UM and then they would they would cast
Speaker 1: it into UM copper one thirty second of an inch
Speaker 1: thick and then it like you said, it would attach
Speaker 1: by UM spectacles or around the ear. And Mrs Lad
Speaker 1: you said she used hair, Yeah, but would use like
Speaker 1: he painted his on. Yeah. So when you go to
Speaker 1: look up these photos. They'll have the before and after
Speaker 1: and on the left. You know, it's sometimes you can't
Speaker 1: even tell what this man might have previously looked like,
Speaker 1: and so you look at the right and then it
Speaker 1: looks you know, it's a mask, but you're like, you
Speaker 1: can tell that that's what this guy looked like, and
Speaker 1: it's like, it really is true. The loss of identity
Speaker 1: that must happen have happened at least back then, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure now too. Where if you undergo a
Speaker 1: facial trauma, it's amazing what how drastically it can change
Speaker 1: how you look your face. It just changes from what
Speaker 1: it was before. When you see some of the before
Speaker 1: before pictures, so before the injury, then after the injury,
Speaker 1: and then after the mask that before the injury, and
Speaker 1: then after the injury picture, sometimes you're like, how, like
Speaker 1: I I don't see that person in there at all.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I can imagine, like we said, they kept
Speaker 1: mirrors out of the ward because seeing yourself like that,
Speaker 1: especially if you were in the process of undergoing surgery,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were like, you don't need to see
Speaker 1: this at all, buddy, just just let us keep working
Speaker 1: on you. You know. Yeah, one of the tougher parts
Speaker 1: of this process too, and um, and also most important
Speaker 1: was matching the skin tone. So obviously, if you have
Speaker 1: a mask that doesn't look like your other you know,
Speaker 1: skin tone on the rest of your face, then it's
Speaker 1: going to stand out more. And your whole point was
Speaker 1: to blend in. So she would save it that for
Speaker 1: last and actually fit the mask on the man and
Speaker 1: and paint it while it was on their face so
Speaker 1: she could match it as exactly as possible. I think
Speaker 1: used a couple of different oil paints at first didn't
Speaker 1: work out, yeah, and then landed on enamel, which is
Speaker 1: and these things still you know, we should say it's
Speaker 1: not like it would last twenty years like they were.
Speaker 1: You know, to mask you wear every day, so it
Speaker 1: would get beat up over the years, and you know,
Speaker 1: wear and tear happened for sure. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: other things that the paint too is apparently the hue
Speaker 1: was really difficult because on like an overcast day, it
Speaker 1: might look really lifelike, but then that same hue in
Speaker 1: sunlight looked like dead, so they had to like kind
Speaker 1: of split the difference between it too. So from what
Speaker 1: I saw, the paint getting the complexion right, was the
Speaker 1: hardest part for sure. But yeah, those masks supposedly had
Speaker 1: a life expectancy of just about a couple of years.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is after the war, um Wood
Speaker 1: Studio closed down and so did lads um, and so
Speaker 1: these men that was it they got their mask. It
Speaker 1: was almost like this weird little pop up that happened,
Speaker 1: that went away and never came back. So these men,
Speaker 1: you know, clung to their masks for as long as
Speaker 1: they could, and so much so that um they there
Speaker 1: are there. Basically aren't any of those masks. No one
Speaker 1: is like, oh, this is a World War one UM
Speaker 1: portrait mask. Those are all buried with their owners because
Speaker 1: those masks became part of their public identity as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet you there's gotta be one somewhere, right, surely,
Speaker 1: but I think most of them are probably buried with
Speaker 1: their owners. And these, like I said it, with lad
Speaker 1: only masks, you were very lucky if you were able
Speaker 1: to get one of these, because there were, um I
Speaker 1: believe they estimated twenty tho fate what they called facial
Speaker 1: casualties in World War One alone. So out of that number,
Speaker 1: to only get eighty five from like the best artists
Speaker 1: working is not very many people. And they think Francister
Speaker 1: went would created more, um just because he was open
Speaker 1: longer and he was more prolific, or he's faster. But um,
Speaker 1: they don't have a number. But even still, even if
Speaker 1: he made three times that it's nothing compared to how
Speaker 1: many people have become facially disfigured from injur injuries. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and lad um, she was lauded, she did a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews. Um. When she got back to the United States.
Speaker 1: Two she was made a chevalier. Nice touch, is that right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. And she just
Speaker 1: went back to her you know, her art when she
Speaker 1: got back to the United States. Yeah. This this, I
Speaker 1: want to say, this all awesome Smithsonian article by Caroline
Speaker 1: Alexander who talks about this. Yeah, it's good. It mentions
Speaker 1: that her buss like she was a sculptor and before
Speaker 1: her work in the war and after her work in
Speaker 1: the war, it's actually really kind of generic portraits of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it lacks like the pizzas and like the human
Speaker 1: like touch that her actual wartime mask efforts had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. Yeah, it's cool. I like her busts.
Speaker 1: I liked I like her style. It looks weirdly like
Speaker 1: early twentieth century modern Yeah. Uh. And she died in
Speaker 1: ninety nine. Um, she died young. She died at sixty
Speaker 1: in Santa Barbara. Um. Francis Derwentwood died also young, fifty
Speaker 1: five years old, in nineteen twenty six in London. And uh,
Speaker 1: he was remembered obviously post war as well, which is
Speaker 1: great public monuments war memorials, and the Machine Gun Corps
Speaker 1: in Hyde Park Corner in London is uh apparently where
Speaker 1: one of the most poignant war memorials him loves sits. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like you said, I mean twenty thousand of these
Speaker 1: injuries and only say several hundred of them received masks.
Speaker 1: And again, this is a time when society didn't really
Speaker 1: want you back if you were officially disfigured in the war.
Speaker 1: And there was a there was an idea to basically
Speaker 1: buy some land for disfigured officers, um, to have them
Speaker 1: just basically go live off the land over here and
Speaker 1: have a nice pension and just stay over here. And
Speaker 1: those plans didn't come to fruition um, and so they
Speaker 1: were just kind of expected to just go fade away,
Speaker 1: just go away, we don't want to see you. In Australia,
Speaker 1: apparently they had a lot of um facially disfigured soldiers
Speaker 1: returning home. Um, a lot of them would just go
Speaker 1: out and live into the live in the bush. You know,
Speaker 1: it'd be like living in the woods in in England
Speaker 1: or the U. S is okay, I'm gonna go live
Speaker 1: in the woods now because you guys don't want to
Speaker 1: see my face anymore. And a lot of them committed
Speaker 1: suicide too, said said to say, or died of suspicious
Speaker 1: accidental deaths. Yeah. Man, like the stories where you hear
Speaker 1: about the their kids being frightened of their father and
Speaker 1: stuff after the war just heartbreaking. Yeah, And that was
Speaker 1: supposedly a pretty recurrent anecdote in newspaper articles about this
Speaker 1: about these studios, like they're trying to save people because
Speaker 1: their own kids can't stand to be around them, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but kids even scared of the mask because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it points out as while they did so much to
Speaker 1: restore it, they were still expressionless faces, which um, you
Speaker 1: know could could creep out of kid for sure. But
Speaker 1: we've come a long way and Wonder is proof positive
Speaker 1: of that. Go see that movie. It's good. I will. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about facial differences, go
Speaker 1: check out UM I don't know, just search facial differences,
Speaker 1: check out changing faces dot org and go see Wonder.
Speaker 1: Why not it's a good movie. I'll check it out.
Speaker 1: That was the second one was directed to everything. Okay, UM,
Speaker 1: since I said that it's time for a listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this relative of President Pierce here parentheses
Speaker 1: lighthearted O God. I'm hey, guys, big fan had a
Speaker 1: baby in August, so I've been behind on the episodes.
Speaker 1: Finally got to these new short stuff where you mentioned
Speaker 1: that President Franklin Pierce, and I couldn't help but laugh
Speaker 1: out loud when I heard your disdain for the band.
Speaker 1: My baby son's middle name is actually Pierce, just like
Speaker 1: his father and every other male that was born in
Speaker 1: his family, a tradition that has stemmed since you guessed
Speaker 1: at Franklin Pierce became president. My husband is a great
Speaker 1: great nephew of Pierce the Best. His grandmother actually still
Speaker 1: owns the presidential china. That's kind of cool. Every time
Speaker 1: someone finds out my husband a descendant of a president.
Speaker 1: He gets so excited, but my husband and all of
Speaker 1: his family just roll their eyes and exclaim, oh, he
Speaker 1: was the worst president. Everyone just remembers Lincoln anyway. It
Speaker 1: makes me laugh every time that his family doesn't think
Speaker 1: much of this man any more than the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. So just take comfort knowing that your hate
Speaker 1: on Piers and his faults uh during his time in
Speaker 1: office aren't past his own family. Man. That's something I'll
Speaker 1: do my best to make sure my son makes up
Speaker 1: for it. So, Sad I missed your shows in Denver,
Speaker 1: please come back. And that is sincerely from Sarah, mother
Speaker 1: of a Piers. Thanks Sarah, mother of a Piers. That
Speaker 1: was a great email. Yeah, and we'll come back to
Speaker 1: Denver for sure because we sold out two shows there.
Speaker 1: Denver loves us, loves us, can't get enough of us
Speaker 1: a mile high city. Yes, we'll be back. UM. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, why don't
Speaker 1: you go ahead and mosey on over to um stuff
Speaker 1: you should know dot com check out our social links there.
Speaker 1: I also have a website called Josh clark Way dot
Speaker 1: com if you want to check that out too, that's right,
Speaker 1: and you can always send me Jerry and Chuck an
Speaker 1: email all at once at Stuff podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com