Glossary: Terms and topics in this section
Anna Coleman Ladd and Francis Derwent Wood
A number of artists were associated with the production of facial prostheses for servicemen whose injuries were so severe that they required partial masks to give the appearance of a ‘complete face’.
more...Henry Tonks
Intratracheal anaesthesia
In addition to the innovations in facial surgery pioneered under Harold Gillies at the Queen’s Hospital Sidcup, there were considerable advances in the administering of anaesthetics. It was said at the time that patients feared the anaesthetist’s bottle of chloroform almost as much as the surgeon’s knife.
more...Pedicle Tube
The tube pedicle was developed simultaneously yet independently by Sir Harold Gillies at the Queen’s Hospital Sidcup and ophthalmic surgeon Vladimir Petrovich Filatov in Odessa, Russia between 1916 and 1917. A tube pedicle is a flap of skin sewn down its long edges, with one end left attached to the site of origin, the other is attached to the site to be grafted.
more...Sir Archibald McIndoe, Rainsford Mowlem and the Guinea Pig Club
On the outbreak of World War Two, Harold Gillies and his colleague Tommy Kilner were joined by surgeons Archibald McIndoe, (who was a cousin of Gillies) and Rainsford Mowlem. The re-opening of Sidcup was mooted, but dismissed as at risk from bombing, and the plastic surgery service was split up on service lines.
more...Sir Harold Delf Gillies
Portrait of Sir Harold Gillies on his
Knighthood in 1930. Image
courtesy of The Wellcome Library, London.
The Gillies Archive
A series of coincidences resulted in the discovery of a remarkable collection of material that documents the development of plastic surgery at the beginning of the 20th Century. Each Dominion detachment removed its records after the war; it was assumed that the British records had been donated to the Royal College of Surgeons and destroyed when the College was bombed in the Second War.
more...Varaztad Kazanjian
