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