My father was in the RAF during World War 2, so it follows that I was an avid reader of such books as Boldness be My Friend and reasonably familiar, or so I thought, with the story of plastic surgery, McIndoe and the ''Guinea Pig Club''.
I was quite surprised to discover from the book that the birthplace of modern plastic surgery, Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, Kent, was just 12 minutes' walk from the art school I went to for three years.
Not only that, but also that some of the treatment started there in the Queen's New Zealand unit was ultimately completed at Dunedin Hospital, where they once had a ward named Sidcup.
Between 1917 and 1925, Queen's performed plastic surgery of the face and possessed a unique collection of more than 2500 case files relating to this era. The archives are now with the Royal College of Surgeons.
In 2005, the author found the Otago Daily Times to be wanting. In the answer to a short quiz, the paper gave Sir Archibald McIndoe as the answer to the question: ''name the famous plastic surgeon born in Dunedin''.
While technically correct, the first famous plastic surgeon born in Dunedin was Sir Harold Gillies (in 1882), who was McIndoe's older cousin and closely associated with Queen's Hospital, Sidcup. World War 1 established Gillies' reputation, while World War 2 and the establishment of the ''Guinea Pig Club'' made McIndoe a household name, McIndoe being born in Dunedin in 1900.
Almost as remarkable as Reconstructing Faces is the inclusion, in the back cover of the book, of a DVD produced from four 16mm cinematographic instructional films entitled Techniques in Plastic Surgery. Produced in 1945 by the J. Arthur Rank Organisation for the British Council and rescued from the tip, they show Rainsford Mowlem, a plastic surgeon, performing a variety of operations. However, the book warns, ''they are not for the squeamish or those disturbed by the sight of blood''.
I am both, but I was fascinated enough by the techniques involved to ignore the misgivings of my stomach. Gillies, an enthusiastic amateur artist, believed that plastic surgery was a form of art and that the activities of the plastic surgeon demanded the vision and insight of the artist. Watching the video, I can only agree with him.
Reading Reconstructed Faces put me in mind of the six degrees of separation, the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away. For me at least the book was so. It won't be that way for everyone, I'm sure, but they will find, as I did, the book fascinating and revealing in many different ways.
- Ted Fox is a Dunedin online marketing consultant.
