Harold Gillies During The First World War

World War I was a never before seen type of war. New tactics, artillery, and military technology from the Industrial Revolution led to unforeseen effects. Trenches were a widely used tactic in the response to the new and improved artillery, such as the machine gun. Also, updated medical treatments on the frontline resulted in men’s lives being saved. This combination led to many soldiers surviving facial disfigurement injuries that would have killed them in the past. The physiological effects of living with these injuries were devastating. Therefore, there was a growing need for facial reconstructive surgery also known as plastic surgery. Harold Gillies was one of the pioneers of plastic surgery, in Western Europe, during WWI, creating and
In Western Europe, plastic surgery was seen as ungodly and only saw little acceptance by the 18th century. The war, gave reason for European surgeons to be trained in plastic surgery and to develop new techniques as quickly as possible. At the start of the war, plastic surgery was “crudely practiced, with little real attention given to aesthetics.” (B) Harold Gillies is the one who refined and mass-produced critical techniques that are utilized in today’s practise. When the war began, Gillies left London and joined a Belgian Ambulance unit as a commissioned officer. He then became aware of the many soldiers suffering jaw and facial wounds. This lead to him returning to the United Kingdom and persuading the military authorities to build a specialized facial injury hospital. Queen Mary’s Hospital at Sidcup, opened in July 1917, and was quickly increased in size from 300 to 560 beds. A large number of men sent to Gillies’ hospital had facial wounds far more sever than ever seen before. The outdated treatments and Gillies’ desire to restore function and achieve an aesthetic result meant more experimentation which lead to the development of new
In the process of this, he invented the walking pedicle tube, the Epithelial Outlay, and learned many important lessons along the way. He used the principles from the self-graphing nose operation performed by Gaspare Tagliacozzi, in the 16th century. The operation would include taking skin from the underside of the arm and then grafting it to the nose. However, the patient would be immobilized causing a lot of discomfort. Gillies modified this method and made the walking pedicle tube. A tube of flesh was created by leaving the flesh attached at one end, and rolling it into a tube. The other end would be attach near to where the graph was needed making the tube look like a luggage handle. This resulted in a huge decrease in the chance of infection because “living tissue was encased by the outer layer of skin which was waterproof and infection resistant.” (D) The Epithelial outlay technique was developed for the relief of when the eyelid is turned outward away from the eyeball. It was adapted from the principles of the Esser Inlay and Gillies simplified the method to provide a lining membrane. One of Gillies biggest mistakes was Henry Lumley, who was a pilot with really bad facial burns. Gillies took a massive face shaped flap from Lumley’s chest to transfer to the face, but it soon became infected resulting in Lumley’s death. This taught Gillies that surgery had to be carried out in