Van Baarsel Description

A description of the Van Baarsel P.O.W. Instrument collection with a photo of Dr. Van Baarsel in the top right corner. From the Dental Museum Collection. Transcribed below.
Images and descriptions of items in the Van Baarsel collection, including a spoon, a spatula, two explorers, three elevators, and two forceps. From the Dental Museum Collection. Transcribed below.
Images and descriptions of items in the Van Baarsel collection, including four plastic instruments, two scalers, three effective thumb forceps, a mouth mirror, and the box the instruments were kept in. From the Dental Museum Collection. Transcribed below.

[page 1]

"Silent Tokens"

Gerrard van Baarsel

The Van Baarsel P.O.W. Instrument Collection

Dr. J. M. Van Baarsel 5T6 was a Dental Officer in the Royal Dutch Indies Army. He was captured while practising dentistry in the Dutch East Indies. Sixty-five hundred prisoners were loaded on a small boat, 5000 tons, better known as a hell ship. The unmarked boat was torpedoes by an American submarine. Only 650 people survived. Dr. Van Baarsel was fortunate to be saved, but lost everything including his dental equipment and even his clothing.

Landing in Sumatra, the prisoners were ordered to build a railway through the jungle during whcih time his clothing was a gunny sack, with holes cut out for his head and arms. There were no medical and dental services for either captors or prisoners. Shortly after reaching Sumatra, a Japanese guard having heard he was a dentist, came to him suffering from an abscessing tooth. The guard could not speak Dutch and Dr. Van Baarsel could not speak Japanese, and had neither instruments nor materials to give his captor any relief. The guard, totally berserk on four and five occasions, raised his rifle to shoot, but fortunately did not do so. Dr. Van Baarsel asked his captors to permit him to go into the workshop and see if he could make some instruments with which to give a measure of relief.

These instruments were the result. He had nothing but a teak wood fire in which to heat the material for forging and a piece of rail from the railway to forge it upon. He had never undertaken such a project before, which shows that, in the face of necessity, it is surprising what can be accomplished. The collection is a powerful display of inner strength, innovation, perseverance, survival compassion and the importance of a good sense of humour.

[page 2]

[Image: a spoon]

A spoon made from an empty gasoline drum with which he fed himself.

** Note the signature on the handle.

[Image: close up of the spoon handle]

An enlargement of the spoon.

** Note the signature on the handle.

[Image: Spatula]

A spatula made from a piece of scrap iron.

[Image: two explorers]

Two explorers made from telegraph wire and needles from the emergency serving kit.

** Note the ingenious way in whcih the needles are inserted into the wire handle.

Then the temper was drawn, thus making a very effective explorer for lancing abscesses.

[Image: three elevators]

These three elevators were forged from railway spikes and extracted a great many teeth during his term of imprisonment.

[Image: two forceps]

These forceps were laboriously made from railway spikes. It took 2 weeks of 10 hours daily work to fashion an upper and a lower forceps.

**Note the artistic detail.

"They did a quick and neat job which pleased me and even more my patient, because as you know anaesthetics were a long-forgotten luxury."

[page 3]

[Image: four instruments]

Four plastic instruments made from telegraph wire.

[Image: two scalers]

Two scalers made from telegraph wire which, when tempered, required to be shaped constantly.

[Image: three thumb forceps]

Three effective thumb forceps made from a discarded gasoline drum.

[Image: a mouth mirror]

A mouth mirror made from a piece of biscit [sic] tin and telegraph wire.

[Image: a box]

A box in which he kept his instruments.

** Note the ingenious way in which the margins are lapped to hold the material firm.