MAKING HUMAN FACES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 192, 16 August 1927, Page 10

MAKING HUMAN FACES.

DR. PICKERILL'S WORK. ■ ' —_ \ ■." ■ ACHIEVEMENTS IN WARTIME. GREAT LOSS TO DOMINION: (By Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") v DUNEDIN, this day. Professor of dentistry, surgeon of stomatology and marvel worker with the face, Dr. Pickerill has earned a worldwide reputation (says the "Star"). For twenty years he has been Director of the Dental School,of .New Zealand at Dunedin, and he has made the school known all over the globe. The "Chamber of Horrors" at Otaeo University will ever be filled witn monuments to his skill and ingenuity. In the chamber are wax casts of his truly wonderful work in restoring faces and of his dental developments. A Portion of the chamber is now in packing -ases, labelled with "Ship's hold to Sydney," for the doctor left the Dominion to-day to settle in Sydney. His loss to surgery, medicine and the whole of New Zealand is irreparable, for Sydney will now claim probablv the greatest plastic surgeon in the world. Laughed At, Bat Succeeded. It was at a big hospital in England where Dr. Pickerill, reputed to be one of the leading surgeons on the Army list, was assisted by American medical officers. A soldier was brought into hospital with his face almost unidentifiable. At Wandsworth "tinny" faces or masks were being made for soldiers, who said they did not want a face they could take ■>ff, but one that would grow on.. One eye and the nose were missing from this soldier. The Americans refused to have anything to do with the New Zealander's Proposal, yet, the doctor decided to make Irs great e,ffort to restore this man's face This was the first trial of the. now famous "double tube graft." ' Dr. Pickerill was laughed at for his njains, and told he was doing-a most ridiculous ■ thing. He succeeded. • That was in 1917. No one said much about restoration, but other surgeons were soon r>erfonning .the same. operation. . American doctors were particularly jealous of Ws success. Only hist year was it announced < from- America that a -new system had been discovered. s Grafts on Old People. From the war much was" learnt in science and medicine, and Dr. Pickerill is carrying out his plastic work in Mvilian life. Astonishing and inexplicable • as it seems, grafts, "take" better on aid people than on young. It is much easier to make a graft on an old lady of =eventy than on a, child of seven years During the war doctors suggested* that grafting was all very r . soldiers

who were fit and young and not subjects of any disease, but that such an Operation would be extremely risky or impossible in old. people, subjects of malignant lesions. This world-famed surgeon's experience with skin grafts has proved that'these doctors were wrong. Many ■ people in New Zealand have much reason to thank Dr. Pickerill—sufferers from, rodent Ulcers, cancer, and other teifible facial disfigurements have been ; relieved, and remade, as it - were. The wprst.cases have not been beyond bis skill. Horrible as the afflictions "were, the patients have been able once again to move about, without embarrassment His plea has been that the sufferer should call for treatment when the disease is in its earliest .stages. Removal of Hare Lips. What is known as the triangular or zig-zag graft was originated by Dγ Pickerill in civilian practice. This is principally applied to the treatment of hare lip: Tiny babies born with this deformity have been successfully operated \>n by Dr. Pickerill, who has Ion? maintained that this method gives better results than others devised. '• The old method of drawing the cleft together is ?one. His method is to cut the cleft nto two triangles on each side and then rearrange the triangles—simple and highly practicable, but truly a , wizard's ! idea.