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Portrait of Sir Harold Gillies on his
Knighthood in 1930. Image
courtesy of The Wellcome Library, London.
New Zealander
Sir Harold Delf Gillies is widely accepted as the Father of modern day facial reconstruction.
Gillies was sent to France by the Red Cross, and found himself assisting a French-American dentist, Valadier at Wimereux, near Boulogne, Seeking further inspiration from surgeon Hippolyte Morestin at the Val-de-Grâce Military Hospital near Paris, otolaryngologist
Gillies persuaded Sir Arbuthnot Lane, head of surgery for the British Army, to allow him a ward specifically for the treatment of facial injuries at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot.
Top-left: Dressing station
on the Somme front. Top-right:
First aid on the battlefield.
Bottom: Carriage of a wounded
soldierin the trenches. Images
courtesyof The Wellcome
Library, London.
When these facilities proved inadequate after the opening of the Somme offensive, Lane charged Gillies with the task of setting up and directing a specialist facility at Sidcup. Gillies augmented his British team by arranging the transfer of surgeons from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, creating at the Queen’s Hospital an unparalleled concentration of surgeons (including several visiting US surgeons, together with dentists, technicians, radiologists, artists, photographers and rehabilitation supervisors. Over 5,000 men were subjected to more than 11,000 operations between 1916 and 1925.
Gillies stands at the head of the operating table with his hospital staff. Image courtesy of The Wellcome Library, London.
This period saw huge advances in maxillofacial surgery and anaesthetics and many servicemen continued to receive treatment long after the end of the war. In 1920 Gillies published his seminal text, ‘Plastic Surgery of the Face’, setting out the lessons of Sidcup and the principles of reconstruction, bone and cartilage grafting, tissue transfer and burns management. Gillies’ skills were called upon again during the Second World War when he and his colleague Tommy Kilner together with Gillies younger cousin Archibald McIndoe and his colleague Rainsford Mowlem to once again treat injured servicemen.
