Plastic Surgery: ‘The Man Who Makes Faces’

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 October 1948, Page 10

Plastic Surgery: ‘The Man Who Makes Faces’

“As it did to most Britons, war brought a drastic change to Sir Archibald Mclndoe. He gave up his rich Harley street practice to head the R.A.F.’s plastic surgery programme.” This is the introduction to an article on the famous Dunedinborn plastic surgeon which is featured in the issue of September 27 of the 'American magazine, ■ Time, under the title “The Man Who Makes Faces.”

“As the Battle of Britain raged,” the article continues, “some 4500 airmen were pulled out of their wrecked and flaming planes. Of the 600 cases that Sir Archibald took care of, 200 needed total reconstruction jobs on their faces and hands. His wartime hospital has developed into the finest plastic surgery centre in Europe. “This week, Britain's leading plastic surgeon begins a three-months lecture tour of the United States and Canada. At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, ‘Archie’ Mclndoe, a modest, broad-bdcked. man of 48, will address an alumni association filled with old classmates and students. (He went to Mayo from New Zealand on a fellowship in 1924 and stayed to teach.) Call Him “God”

“Some of his patients call Dr McIndoe ‘God’—and partly mean it. They have seen him take charred, featureless living remains and make them into presentable human beings.

Mclndoe goes about his surgical repairs systematically. First, if it is necessary, he grafts on new eyelids and lips so that the patient can, at least, sleep and eat. Next he makes new noses, chins and ears. As many as 40 operatioons may be reqiured over four or five years. “Mclndoe’s job required much more than surgery; he had to refit his patients for normal life. He insisted upon first-name familiarity among patients and hospital staff. He sent groups of his flyers on trips to London, with tickets to the theatre and reservations at night clubs. He made sure that his patients had pretty nurses.

One of Mclndoe’s first patients was a flyer named Paul Hart. Flames had burned away his nose; his cheeks were raw; his eyelids, eyebrows and chin were gone; his mouth was crushed to an ugly, gaping gash. Some 25 operations, and three years and a-half later, Paul had recovered his face. Today, he and his young wife are running one of the most prosperous bulb farms in'England.

“Guinea Pig Club” “Another patient was Richard Hillary, who wrote his highly acclaimed reminiscences of Oxford and the war, ‘Falling Through Space’ and ‘The Last Enemy,’ in the hospital; left to rejoin the R.A.F. and was shot down in action six weeks later. His heroics inspired Arthur Koestler’s essay, ‘The Birth, of a Myth.’ “Some 600 ‘reconverted’ men of 16 different nationalities have formed a Mclndoe alumni group called the ‘Guinea Pig Club.’ The light-hearted lyrics of the club’s anthem are a tribute to Sir Archibald’s success in salvaging minds as well as faces: “We are Mclndoe’s army, We are his Guinea Pigs; With dermatomes and pedicles, Glass eye-s, false teeth and wigs.”