The Facemaker: A remarkable book about a pioneer of plastic surgery and facial reconstruction

Published date24 June 2022
Sometimes, you just know. From the moment I read this sentence, from The Facemaker's excellent prologue, I knew I had a book on my hands

The Facemaker is the second offering from Dr Lindsey Fitzharris – a medical historian with a PhD from Oxford University – and contains two (if not three) biographies, a punchy mini-history of the first World War, and wrestles with societal attitudes toward disfigurement and the inherent conflict (if not contradiction) of military medicine. If that sounds like a lot, it doesn't read that way: Fitzharris is a gifted storyteller and delights in just about the right amount of detail.

The principal arc of Fitzharris's narrative follows Harold Gillies (biography no.1), a pioneering surgeon whose work with disfigured casualties of the Great War – "the loneliest of Tommies" – was formative in the development of plastic surgery as a speciality (biography no. 2). After a frontline stint learning from a flamboyant French dental surgeon – picture a silver Rolls-Royce converted into a portable operating theatre – Gillies returned to London and established the world's first hospital dedicated to facial reconstruction (biography no. 3). Here, Gillies assembled a multidisciplinary crack team – surgeons, dentists, nurses, but also photographers, sculptors and mask makers – and built a hospital committed to the healing art: while convalescing...

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