. What interested them most was the fixation of
fractures by means of steel plates, which we adopted in all our
serious cases. Apparently the method is very little used abroad,
and as an operation it is distinctly spectacular, for in a few
minutes a shapeless mass which the patient cannot bear to be
touched is transformed into a limb almost as strong as the
other, which can be moved about in any direction without fear of
breaking, and, when the patient recovers consciousness,
almost without discomfort. We almost always had an interested
audience, professional, clerical, or lay, for the chauffeurs found
much amusement in these feats of engineering.

In the afternoon we almost always had some distinguished
visitor to entertain, and it is one of my chief regrets that we
never kept a visitors' book. Its pages would one day have been
of the greatest interest. Twice every week the Queen of the
Belgians came round our wards. She came quite simply, with
one of her ladies and one of the Belgian medical officers, and
no one could possibly have taken a deeper interest in the
patients. Her father studied medicine as a hobby, and had,
indeed, become a very distinguished physician, and she herself
has had considerable training in medicine, so that her interest
was a great deal more than that of an ordinary lay visitor. She
was quite able to criticize and to appreciate details of nursing
and of treatment. She always spoke to every patient, and she
had a kind word for every one of them, Belgian, French, or even
German, for we had a few Germans. There was something deeply
touching in the scene. The dimly lit ward, with its crude furniture,
the slim figure in black, bending in compassion over the rough
fellows who would gladly have given their lives for her, and
who now lay wounded in the cause in which she herself had
suffered. The Germans may destroy Belgium, but they will never
destroy the kingdom of its Queen. Sometimes the King came
to see his soldiers--a tall, silent man, with the face of one who
has suffered much, and as simple, as gentle, and as kindly as
his Queen. It was good to see the faces light up as he entered
a ward, to see heads painfully raised to gaze after no splendid
uniform, but a man.

One of our most distinguished and most welcome visitors was
Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium. She brought her large
X-ray equipment to Furnes for work amongst the wounded, and
we persuaded her to stay with us for a week. O