MIRACLE OF SURGERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20705, 1 May 1929, Page 10

MIRACLE OF SURGERY

A FACE REBUILT.

NEW ZEALAND SURGEON’S SKILL.

Not the least of the strides which science has made as a result of the war is in the realm of plastic surgery. The world-wide conflict afforded material and opportunity for surgical work on a scale previously undreamed of, and wonderful cures were made, the tissues of the healthy human body responding in amazing fashion to the work of the skilled doctor.

A remarkable case in point (says a Sydney newspaper) is that of Gunner Jim Walker, of the New Zealand Field Artillery, whose face was literally blown away by a fragment of shell casing at the battle of Passehendaele, but has been reconstructed. After 11 years the*“man in the gauze mask” (as Walker was known) has become the man with the synthetic face. This miracle of surgery was accomplished, appropriately enough, by a fellow New Zealander—Dr Pickerill, of Otago, now practising in Sydney. Jim Walker is now 33. He enlisted in 1915, serving during his first months of the war on Gallipoli. He was not wounded on the Peninsula, and when hia regiment returned to Egypt, after the evacuation, he transferred from the mounted rifles to the field artillery. He went through the carnage of the Somme and Messines unscathed, but afterwards there came Passehendaele,' and an unspeakably terrible wound, which might well have meant a living death. Walker was struck by a piece of gas shell casing, which hit him si dew s across the face without entering the skull. The whole of the upper jaw was shattered; the nose was cut off, leaving a terrible hole betwe n the eyes; the lips were blown away, and the flesh of his chin hung over his neck. The wounded m*n regained consciousness in England in a military hospital, hut the exigencies of the war did not allow of plastic surgery, and it was not until long afterwards that he underwent the first operation of the series which literally re-made his face. Wonderful grafting work was done in Sydney by Dr Pickerill, portions of the scalp, the shoulder, • and the abdomen being placed in position. Nature responded, and after long months of pain Walker is a new man. He has regained more than his face, for, as he says: “Pain?” Well I can walk down Pitt street now and be treated like all the rest of the Diggers. I’ve got a real ‘mo,’ too! ” —this last a reference to the fact that part of the scalp, carrying hair, was successfully grafted on t his upper lip.