Library Collections: Document: Full Text


The Disabled Soldier

Creator: Douglas C. McMurtrie (author)
Date: 1919
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16  Figure 17  Figure 18  Figure 19  Figure 20  Figure 21  Figure 22  Figure 23  Figure 24  Figure 25  Figure 26

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717  

The patient leaves the institution only when he is able to return either to the army or to his former occupation in civil life. In the latter case, he is not discharged until the hospital finds for him regular employment. In procuring employment, the hospital cooperates with the public employment office of Vienna, to which it details its own physicians, and a representative of the Ministry of Public Works. In the case of independent landowners or craftsmen, the hospital, before discharging them, makes inquiry to ascertain whether their prospective income is sufficient to their support. A register of all men discharged is kept by the hospital, and their place of employment and earnings are recorded from time to time.

718  

The general tendency in Austria has been to establish large size institutions, on the Vienna model, and to locate them in principal cities, of which there are relatively few in Austria. By the end of 1915, institutions for crippled soldiers existed in Prague, Reichenberg, Troppau, Teschen, Graz, Cracow, Linz, Mehr-Ostran, and in some of the other large industrial cities.

719  

In Hungary, provision for disabled soldiers was organized under several decrees issued in September, 1915. The work was put in charge of a Royal Office for the Disabled. The decrees provide that orthopedic appliances shall gratuitously be supplied. Re-education of disabled soldiers in their former occupation or a new one is obligatory. The treatment and re-education are not to last more than one year.

720  

Special re-examination commissions were established at Budapest, Pressburg, Kolozsvar, and Zagreb, the chairmen and members being appointed by the Premier from medical and industrial circles. Invalids refusing to use prostheses, to submit to the treatment, or to take advantage of the re-education offered, must appear before these commissions. Those who persist in refusal, in spite of the findings of the commission, forfeit all or part of their claim to a pension, excepting only those who have been in active military service for ten years or more.

721  

The Office for the Disabled, in collaboration with the War Ministry, keeps record of all soldiers incapacitated for military service and requiring medical care. It controls all hospitals for the treatment of disabled soldiers, all training schools, all shops manufacturing prostheses and artificial limbs, and all agricultural and industrial training institutions. It supports and supervises all private institutions caring for the disabled, and also manages the employment service.

722  

The institutions under the control of the Office for the Disabled are officially divided in three classes: (1) institutions for medical care; (2) shops for the manufacture of prostheses; (3) schools for invalids.

723  

The men are assigned to the different medical institutions by the military authorities. They are received and discharged by the director, upon report by a commission of officials of the hospital.

724  

All the medical institutions were created anew. Organization began at Budapest with four hospitals for 4,500 patients; by the middle of 1916 there was accommodation for over 10,000 in the hospitals of that city alone. In addition to those at Budapest, similar institutions were established at Pressburg, Kolozsvar, Kassa, and several other cities.

725  

Private or commercial initiative failed to provide an adequate supply of artificial limbs. The Office for the Disabled, therefore, established shops for the manufacture of prostheses at the metal trades schools of Budapest and Pressburg. The work is done either by invalids or by soldiers detailed by the military authorities. In the spring of 1916 there came into being a permanent state factory for the replacement and repair of artificial limbs.

726  

Among the schools for the disabled, the largest is that at Budapest, which had 700 pupils at the beginning of 1916. Almost ninety per cent, of the pupils are peasants. The primary object of the re-education is to train independent craftsmen. The classes having the greatest numbers of pupils are those for shoemakers, tailors, harness-makers, cartwrights, locksmiths, and cabinet-makers.

727  

Similar schools are found in Pressburg, Kassa, and Kolozsvar. Alongside of the vocational training, instruction in reading and writing is given to illiterates. Those who have interrupted their elementary or highschool education are given an opportunity to continue it. In some of the schools instruction is also given in typewriting, stenography, and bookkeeping.

728  

At Budapest, at the Institute for the Blind, which has approximately 140 patients, blind soldiers are taught carpet-making, brush-making, massage, and the like.

729  

For the benefit of those men so disabled that they cannot be placed in regular factories or mercantile concerns, special cooperative shops have been created.

730  

It seems that while the work in its medical aspects ranks high, the vocational and economic aspects have been rather neglected. Thus, the regular vocational schools have not been utilized for the re-education of invalids; nor has any opportunity been taken of the different industrial organizations and trade associations. Very little has been done in the way of training in agriculture. The employment service of the Office for the Disabled seems to be organized in a rather bureaucratic way, no cooperation has been asked of either local or trade organizations, and no vocational advisers are employed.

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