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Sir Harold Gillies: The 'Godfather' Of Modern Plastic Surgery
Gillies developed the plastic surgery; he innovated and pioneered new techniques, perfected them, shared his skills and insights with surgeons from all over the world.
“Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime;
And departing leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time.”
-H.W.Longfellow.
Sir Harold D. Gillies (June 17, 1882 - September 10, 1960) is universally regarded as the father of plastic surgery. He brought his surgeon’s skills and his artist’s sensibilities to the challenging task of reconstructing and restoring the faces of thousand of patients ravaged by the First and Second World War.
Born in New Zealand, Gillies moved to England to study medicine at the University of Cambridge and later went on to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London to study the specialty of otolaryngology. He initially planned a career in otolaryngology but, while serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the World War I, he specialized in treating patients with facial injuries. A separate unit was set up under his command in 1917 and the Queen’s Hospital in Sidcup opened, providing over 1,000 beds. It was here that Gillies and his colleagues developed and tested many innovative techniques and procedures culminating in the development of plastic surgical specialty. During the war, more than 11,000 procedures were performed on over 5,000 patients. For this outstanding work, Harold Gillies was knighted in 1930.After the war Gillies worked to extend the techniques of plastic and reconstructive surgery, almost single-handedly creating the specialty of plastic surgery.During the World War II, Gillies applied his extensive knowledge of plastic surgery and organized plastic surgery units in various parts of Britain. Gillies converted the private wing of the Park Prewett Hospital, Basingstoke, England, known as “Rooksdown House” into a 120-bed plastic surgery unit which became a leading centre in the field. For 20 years, Gillies performed thousands of reconstructive plastic surgical procedures in the operating theatres. Additionally, he trained numerous doctors from Commonwealth nations and many of them became founders of plastic surgery in their own countries.
In 1920, his text book “Plastic Surgery of the Face” was published, setting down the principles of modern plastic surgery; principles which were adopted by surgeons from every part of the world. The British Medical Journal commented that it was ‘one of the most notable contributions made to surgical literature in our day’. The New York Medical Journal said that “his are the greatest of all contributions to the advance of this interesting reparative work.”
In 1957 he published ‘The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery’, which established this artistic science as an acknowledged brand of medicine and still remains a major work on this subject. Gillies described his work as ‘a strange new art’; he loved the creative and imaginative side of reconstructive surgery. While his physical dexterity made him a master surgeon, his artistic ability greatly helped in reshaping people’s badly disfigured faces. A colleague of his once wrote that “in many hundreds of hours spent assisting or in watching Gillies in the operating room I never once saw him perform a hurried or rough movement. All the actions of his hands were consistently gentle, accurate and deft.”
Speaking to other plastic surgeons he once said, ‘within us all there is an overwhelming urge to change something ugly and useless into some other thing more beautiful and more functional’.
For Gillies, plastic surgery not only involved restoring function but also making the person look normal and sometimes more beautiful than before. He was driven by the idea that the surgeon should be creative, imaginative and in fact an artist.
At the age of 78, he was given the Special Citation of the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, in recognition of his “development of the specialty of plastic surgery,” and his “outstanding scientific contributions to the advancement of its practice.” Today Gillies is remembered each year when the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery gives out its Gillies Award for best science research paper.
Gillies’ contribution to plastic surgery was honoured by Sir Heneage Ogilvie who said, ‘There was no plastic surgery before he came. Everything since then, no matter whose name be attached to it, was started by Gillies, perfected by him and handed on by him to lesser men, who have often claimed it as their own’.