Sir Harold Delf Gillies, CBE FRCS (1882 – 1960) - from New Zealand - Doctor in WW1 - pioneer working with facial injuries

With thanks to Dominic Sheridan of Australian Great War Poetry

Harold Delf Gillies was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, the son of Member of Parliament in Otago, Robert Gillies.   He attended Whanganui Collegiate School and studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, UK. Despite a stiff elbow from a childhood accident at home, he was an excellent sportsman. He was a golf blue in 1903, 1904 and 1905 and also a rowing blue, competing in the 1904 Boat Race.[6] At Caius he became a freemason and rose to be Master of Caius Lodge. Harold went on to study at St Bartholomew's Hospital and won the Luther Holden Research Scholarship in 1910. He was also lecturer on plastic surgery in that medical school.

Following the outbreak of the First World War, Harold joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. Initially posted to Wimereux, near Boulogne in France, he acted as medical minder to French-American dentist, Auguste Charles Valadier, who was not allowed to operate unsupervised but was attempting to develop jaw repair work

Harold was the inventor of the ‘pedicle tube’ in WW1. Antibiotics had not yet been invented, meaning it was very hard to graft tissue from one part of the body to another because infection often developed. But while treating Able Seaman Willie Vicarage, Harold Gillies invented the “tubed pedicle”. This used a flap of skin from the chest or forehead and “swung” it into place over the face. The flap remained attached but was stitched into a tube. This kept the original blood supply intact and dramatically reduced the infection rate. Because of Gillies’ pushing, the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, in England, was opened in 1917.

For his war services, Harold Gillies was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1919, and promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire the following year.  He was knighted in the 1930 Birthday Honours

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Gillies  Photo:  Google Images.