PLASTIC SURGERY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 127, 25 November 1935, Page 9

PLASTIC SURGERY

YOUTH'S FACE RENEWED

VICTIM OF NITRIC ACID

WORLD-WIDE INTEREST-

(From "The Port's" Representative.) SYDNEY, November 16.

After having half his face burned away with nitric acid, 19-year-old lan Williams has watched the rebuilding and regrowth of his features until now he is as near to nature's design As science can make him. In six months he probably will be a true replica of the original lan, though he will have only one side of his face to shave. The part on which the down of youth will never show is now composed of flesh transferred'by pfastic surgery from his body, so that one normal cheek has a healthy florid colour, while the other is white and fair. Sunbaking and massage will" change all that '

Lan comes from Queensland. Until he was 18 years of age ha had never been sick. At the Government Printing Office in Brisbane, where he was employed, he was carrying a bottle of nitric acid when it slipped from his hands and was broken. . Williams was splashed from head to foot by the acid. The smooth skin of his face had become raw before his workmates could apply the corrective remedy kept ready for such an emergency. The agony of the burning must have been maddening. The acid flowed down his leg and flooded his shoe top eatmg: away the flesh of the ankle. ' But Williams kept his head. He'closed his eyes tightly as he staggered about and this saved his sight. He also pressed his fingers against his nose to prevent internal burning. A drop of acid was on a finger tip and this ate a hole m his upper lip. The gap has been filled in by an artistic inlay" of grafted flesh. Less than an inch- in circumference, it was held with sixty stitches.

For five months Williams was in a Brisbane hospital with one cheek the chin, and the throat denuded of most of the flesh. An eyelid, apart from the innermost lining, was eaten away the under lip was gone, and his body was frightfully scarred. In January last he was taken to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, where the biggest and most successful plastic surgery work was performed. Strips of flesh two inches wide and ten inches long were slowly moved up from the area of the chest and ribs to his face by tube grafting. The plastic surgeon worked with a photograph of Williams before him, put on a new eyelid, and restored the contour of the face to the likeness of the picture. Williams has now left hospital and gone back to Brisbane. :

The case has aroused considerable interest all over the world. Each month the work was photographed arid copies were sent to medical„ authorities: in the. principal cities of the Empire. It has been discussed in voluminous correspondence, and advice has been offered by the leading plastic surgeons in England, including the ex-New Zealander, Sir Harold Gillies. Williams is said to be the only known victim of extensive nitric acid burns to survive, and therefore has been the only patient offering opportunity for such considerable facial restoration.