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The facemaker, one surgeon's battle to mend the disfigured soldiers of World War I, Lindsey Fitzharris

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

contains biographical information

illustrationsplatesportraits

index present

non fiction

The facemaker

bibliography

Lindsey Fitzharris

one surgeon's battle to mend the disfigured soldiers of World War I

From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. The war's new weaponry, from tanks to shrapnel, enabled slaughter on an industrial scale, and given the nature of trench warfare, thousands of soldiers sustained facial injuries. Medical advances meant that more survived their wounds than ever before, yet disfigured soldiers did not receive the hero's welcome they deserved. Historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the astonishing story of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to restoring the faces and the identities of a brutalized generation. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the Front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction in Sidcup, south-east England. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of doctors, nurses and artists whose task was to recreate what had been torn apart. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero but losing a face made him a monster, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits

adult