Faces of War: Men With Broken Faces and The Tin Nose Shop

By | January 4, 2017

Located inside the 3rd London General Hospital, its properly known as the "Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department" but wounded tommies humorously called it "The Tin Nose Shop". This department serves as an act of desperate improvisation produced by the Great War, which had exhausted all conventional strategies to deal with trauma to body, mind and soul.

The following video is a footage of the “Tin Nose Shop” situated in London where the realistic masks were made to help wounded soldiers. Disclaimer: The flick is originally silent but someone unknown added some music which you might wish to turn down or mute...

The medical innovations at that time made a great impact on the surgical technology we have today. Undoubtedly, the photos of the troops who underwent face reconstruction in the early 1900s are remarkable given the severity of their traumas and the medical potential of earlier days.

"Red Cross Work on Mutilés at Paris" (1918) : An approximately 4-minute video of World War 1 Red Cross workers (including sculptor/artist Anna Coleman Ladd) fashioning prosthetic/cosmetic devices for men with facial injuries.

Credits: National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (Washington DC), WashingtonDC Museum