I’d like to introduce a plastic surgery pioneer called Harold Gillies. Gillies was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where despite a stiff elbow (sustained sliding down the banisters at home as a child) he was a rowing blue.
Gillies married Kathleen Margaret Jackson on November 9, 1911, in London. They had four children. His youngest son Michael Thomas Gillies followed his father into medicine.
In addition to his career as a surgeon, he was also a champion golfer and inveterate practical joker. For many years his home was at 71 Frognal, in the heart of London’s Hampstead village. A blue plaque on the front of that house now commemorates his life and work.
Corps. Initially posted to Wimereux, near Boulogne, he acted as medical minder to a French-American dentist, Valadier, who was not allowed to operate unsupervised but was attempting to develop jaw repair work. Gillies became enthusiastic about the work and, returning to England, persuaded the army’s chief surgeon, Arbuthnot Lane, that a facial injury ward should be established at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot.
Following the outbreak of World War I he joined the Royal Army Medical. This rapidly proved inadequate, and a new hospital devoted to facial repairs was developed at Sidcup. The Queen’s Hospital opened in June 1917 and with its convalescent units provided over 1,000 beds. There Gillies and his colleagues developed many techniques of plastic surgery; more than 11,000 operations were performed on over 5,000 men. The hospital, later to become Queen Mary’s Hospital, was at Frognal House; this was the birthplace and property of Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney after whom Sydney, Australia was named.
For his war services Gillies was knighted in the Birthday Honours list of June 1930. Arbuthnot Lane commented “Better late than never”.
Between the wars Gillies developed a substantial private practice with Rainsford Mowlem, including many famous patients, and travelled extensively, lecturing, teaching and promoting the most advanced techniques worldwide.
In 1930 Gillies invited his cousin, Archibald McIndoe to join the practice, and also suggested he apply for a post at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. This was the point at which McIndoe became committed to plastic surgery, in which he too became preeminent.
During World War II Gillies acted as a consultant to the Ministry of Health, the RAF and the Admiralty. He organised plastic surgery units in various parts of Britain. His own work continued at Rooksdown House, part of the Park Prewett Hospital, Basingstoke. During this period, and after the war, he trained many doctors from Commonwealth nations in plastic surgery.
In 1946, he and a colleague carried out the world’s first sex reassignment surgery from female to male on Michael Dillon. In 1951 he and colleagues carried out the first sex reassignment surgery from male to female using a flap technique on Roberta Cowell, which became the standard for 40 years.
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