Plastic surgery as a medical speciality began 100 years ago during the first world war, pioneered by Dunedin-born surgeon Harold Gillies. Gillies treated thousands of men who needed reconstructive surgery due to dreadful war injuries, the likes of which had rarely been seen before.
Dr Lindsey Fitzharris is a medical historian whose book The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I is an intimate account of the struggles Gillies and his team faced at the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup and of the men who suffered the double trauma of injury in the battlefield and the painful process of recovery.
Photo: Grunegreen/Allen Lane Publishing
