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More and more emphasis is being placed on physical exercise as a means of bringing the physical condition back to the standard. The plan is that a man shall begin very simple but systematic physical exercises even before he is out of bed. These are gradually increased, until finally he has two or three hours a day under a regular gymnasium instructor. Games and outdoor sports are found to have an immense therapeutic value, both psychological and physical, as compared with medico-mechanical treatment. Though the hospitals do not attempt to train a man to a trade many of them have workshops attached for purposes of functional re-education. There is great stress placed on the fact that even this occupational therapy should be really useful and should lead the patient direct to some practical occupation.

GENERAL INTEREST IN ARTIFICIAL LIMBS

All artificial limbs are furnished and kept in repair by the government. The government has prescribed maximum prices for the different types. Otherwise there is no official supervision: no standard pattern is prescribed, and the matter is left lo the doctors and engineers of the country.

The result is an immense stimulation of activity. The magazines are full of descriptions of new appliances recommended by doctors and manual training teachers from all parts of the country. At an exhibition of artificial limbs, held at Charlottenburg, there were shown thirty kinds of artificial arms and fifty legs in actual use. The German Orthopedic Society has devoted much discussion to the matter and there has been wide education and publicity.

The principle now thoroughly accepted is that the appliance should reproduce not the lost limb but the lost function. It should not be an imitation arm or leg, but a tool. The standard of merit is the number of activities it makes possible. The so-called Sonntagsarm (Sunday arm) is never supplied except on request to clerical workers.

RE-EDUCATION WITH MEDICAL TREATMENT

Re-education in Germany goes on at the same time as the medical treatment. This has two causes: First, there is the strong conviction that results can be obtained only by getting hold of a patient at the earliest possible moment of convalescence, and second, the fact that, since the Imperial Government does not pay anything towards re-education, it is more economical for the care committees to attend to it while the men are in the hospitals and thus save themselves the expense of maintenance.

The first civilian function in the care of the war handicapped is vocational advice. The local care committee usually appoints vocational advisers, whose appointments must be sanctioned by the local military authorities, controlling the visits made to the men at the hospitals. As soon as a man is well enough to be visited, the committee sends to him its representative to get full facts on his experience and his physical condition and then advise him as to re-education or immediate work. It is insisted that a man must, if humanly possible, go back to his old trade, or, failing that, to one like it.

In most instances, there are no workshops maintained at the hospitals. The local care committee may utilize the local trade schools. There are excellent facilities for this, since every town has at least one trade school. Some representative of the educational authorities generally serves on the local care committee and the schools are eager, in any case, to offer free instruction.

German magazines are full of advertisements of free courses for soldiers, offered by schools of the most varied kind, public and private, from agricultural and commercial schools to professional schools and universities. On the other hand, in a large town, with a large number of hospitals, the committee may create a school of its own. Thus, in Dusseldorf, for instance, where there are fifty hospitals, the committee has taken possession of a school building equipped with shops and tools and given twenty courses open to men from all the hospitals.

GREAT VARIETY OF TRADES

The instruction offered and the trades taught present a great variety. It is planned that none of the courses shall take more than six months, the maximum time for hospital care. These short courses are intended for men of experience who need further practice in their old trade or in an allied one. If a man needs further training after this short course, he becomes the charge of the local care committee, which supports him while he attends a technical school or pays the premium for apprenticing him to a master workman.

A special effort is being made to return to the land all who have any connection with it, such as farmers, farm laborers and even hand-workers of country birth. All the hospitals which have any land give courses in farming and gardening for their inmates. It is estimated that there are several hundred such hospital farms, small or large, run by the wounded. In addition to this, there are definite summer farm courses at agricultural schools and universities, which are free to cripples. There are in the empire ten regular agricultural schools for war wounded.