PLASTIC SURGERY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 3, 5 January 1937, Page 10

PLASTIC SURGERY

NEW FACE FOR SYDNEY YOUTH (From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, December 31. A Sydney youth whose features were practically destroyed over two years ago when he fell face-down into a pool of nitric acid has been given a new face by plastic surgery. He has now undergone the final stage in a "reconstruction'' which took 28 months to complete. This feat, which is described at length in the Medical Journal of Australia, was made possible by the art of "tube-grafting" developed by since the war. The patient, a youth of 18, met with his dreadful accident in August, 1934. As his burnt face healed, it became scarred, and contracted beyond recognition. It looked a hopeless task, but the surgeon remodelled the chin, made a new eyelid, cut out the facial scars, and "made over" the face with grafts from the chest. Although the task is not yet complete, the patient's face has been restored to a shape so normal that it would pass unnoticed in the street. An honorary surgeon at one of Sydney's public hospitals, helped by advice from Sir Harold Gillies (the famous New Zealand plastiq surgeon), a Macquarie Street specialist, and a Professor of Anatomy at Sydney University, carried out the difficult work.