PLASTIC SURGERY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21633, 9 February 1945, Page 6

PLASTIC SURGERY

GRATEFUL AIRMEN DR. MHNDOE’S GENIUS NEW FACES FOR OLD (By Telegraph—Pfesa Aaan. —Copyright.) (Special Australian fcsjrresponuent). vfl a.in.) SYDNEY, Fob. 9. The work in England of a New Zealander, Dr. Archibald 11. Mclndoe, born in Dunedin, who has revolutionised the treatment of extreme burns and is making medical history in plastic surgery, has won the undying gratitude of hundreds of warshattered Allied airmen. An Australian fighter pilot, just returned to his own country, is the latest to tell a personal story of Dr. Mclndoe’s brilliant medical achievements. Warrant Officer Freeman Strickland. of Melbourne, was a blackhaired. good-looking youth ot 21 when he enlisted in tho R.A.A.F. in May. 1942. Eighteen months later he was unrecognisable. During the invasion of Italy his Spitfire collided with another plane and crashed in names. Warrant Officer Strickland suffering fearful burns. His right hand was charred to the bone. Tic had lost all the right side of his face and had severe head burns. To-day he is back in Australia with his face almost as good looking and cheerful as the one lie lost in September, 1943. The story of his amazing recovery is a tale of the little village of East Grinstead, in Surrey, where the New Zealand medical genius. Dr. Mclndoe, controls the Queen Victoria Cottage Hospital—a haven for war victims whose appearance is such that they are afraid of the prying eyes of the world. After weeks in hospital in Sicily and Tunis, Warrant Officer Strickland came to East Grinstead at Christmas, 1943. His face was shapeless and raw red. He wanted only obscurity. '■*97l!? But Dr. Mclndoe is a psychologist as well as a plastic surgeon. First he told Warrant Officer Strickland to get out and have some fun and not to come back until he had spent £5 on having fun. In the following months Warrant Officer Strickland went 2G times to the operating table. Gradually the face he had lost was restored. He was almost ready to come home when a tragedy occurred. The work on his new face collapsed and the entire reconstruction had to be begun . again.

Now, apart from a sore on the right side of his face, he looks the same as he did when he went away*to the war in 1942. He owes it all, lie says, to Dr. Mclndoe. To nearly 500 fearfully-maimed airmen each year Dr. Mclndoe is giving new faces and new hope. By ihe end of the year thousands of men who might have given up in despair will have returned through his agency to normal civilian life, bearing few traces of their appalling experiences.