NEW FACES.
LONDON, November 8
What has become of the men who had terrible facial wounds in the war? The foreign visitors to Britain often asks this question amd finds it hard to believe that great numbers of their men are not still dragging out hopeless and dreary existences in sad homes and hospitals. Of some 10,000 cases of this kind which passed through tlie main concentration hospital for bad facial injuries, the Queen’s Hospital at Sidcup, only 10 or 15 men are regarded as incurably disfigured. The Ministry of Pensions is understood to lie contemplating the purchase for these men of a country house as a home for them.
This wonderful number of cures is due largely to the skill of Major H. D. Gillies R.A.M.C., chief plastic surgeon at the Sidcup hospital. He has grown for the disfigured new lips, chins and cheeks, mended and replaced shattered jaws, and even replaced faces that had been literally Burned away by terrible explosions. In mending wrecked faces his principle is “bone for bone, cartilage for cartilage, and fat for fat.” He has built jaws with bits of bone from the leg, cheeks with fatty tissue covered with strips of skin taken from the body, and noses with cartilage from the ribs.
Major Gillies paid a high tribute to the skill of his fellow plastic surgeons at Sidcup. “Their success in making uood the wreckage of the war is practically complete,” he said. “The maimed men are to be found sitting alongside you in omnibuses and trains working with you in shop and office, on the land or back in the Navy and Army again. You would not have an inkling of what had happened to them. “I can tell you of one ease of a petty officer in the Navy who had his face burned off at the battle of Jutland. He has had a new face built, is back in the Navy, and recently passed his gunnery tests. There have been other eases as remarkable who are back in civil life again.” “Are the results permanent?” Major Gillies was asked. “They are,” he replied.
PLASTIC SURGERY WONDERS.
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Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1922, Page 1
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358NEW FACES. Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1922, Page 1
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