Making Human Faces

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 212, 22 August 1927, Page 8

Making Human Faces

DR. PICKERILL’S WORK ACHIEVEMENTS IN WAR TIME TO DOMINION. Dunedin, Aug. 15. 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 Otago University will ever be filled with 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 cases, labelled with “Ship’s hold to Sydney,’ for the doctor left the Dominion today to settle in Sydney. His loss to surgery, medicine and the whole of New Zealand is irreparable, for Sydney will now claim probably the greatest plastic surgeon in the world. LAUGHED AT, BUT 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. Al Wandsworth “tinny” faces or marks were being made for soldiers, who said they did not waul a face they could lake off, 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 his great effort 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 pains, 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 performing the same operation. American doctors were particularly jealous of his success. Only last year was it announced from America that a new system had been discovered. GRAFTS ON OLD PEOPLE. From the war much was learnt in science and medicine, and Dr. Pickerill is now carrying out his plastic work in civilian life. Astonishing and inexplicable as it seems, grafts “take” better on old people than on young. It is much easier to make a graft on an old lady of seventy than on a child of seven years. During the war doctors suggested that grafting was all very well for 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 tesions. This worldfamed 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 terrible facial disfigurements have been relieved, and remade, as it were. The worst cases have not been beyond his 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 jyhen the disease is in its earliest stages. REMOVAL OR HARE LIPS. What is known as the triangular or zig-zag graft was originated by Dr. Pickerill in civilian practice. This is principally applied to the treatment of hare lip. Tiny babies born with this deformity, have been successfully operated on by Dr. Pickerill, who has long maintained that this method gives better results than others devised. The old method of drawing the cleft together is gone. His method is to cut the cleft into two triangles on each side and then rearrange the triangles—simple and highly practicable, but truly a wizard’s idea.