The Man Who Rebuilt the Faces of WW1

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The mechanised warfare of the First World War brought unprecedented new levels of firepower and destruction to the battlefield and with it horrific new injuries. Advances in medicine also meant that soldiers were surviving injuries that previously would have been fatal. Many of these men were left with horrific, disfiguring facial injuries which carried with them not just a physical trauma but a social stigma as well. One man made it his mission to help them and in the process developed many of the techniques that formed the basis of plastic surgery as we know it today.

Dr Lindsey Fitzharris joined Dan on stage at the Chalke Valley History Festival to talk about the extraordinary career of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies. They discuss the realities of combat injuries, how Gillies established the first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction and the profound impact he had on the lives of his patients.

Warning: This episode contains discussions of surgery and battlefield injury.

This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges, the audio editor was Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Take this ad break to breathe in and out. Breathe in and out. Small things can
0:22.7	make a big difference. Such every mind matters for more free ways to be kind to
0:28.4	your mind. Hello there podcast lover. It is me Russell Tovy and Robert Diamant. We're here
0:35.2	today to talk about a very exciting exhibition titled Strange Clay Ceramic's In Contemporary
0:40.1	Art at the Hayward Gallery which is on until the 8th of January 2023. Exploring how contemporary
0:45.6	artists have used clay in unexpected ways. Artists include Betty Woodman, Edmund DeVal, Magdalena
0:52.4	Rodondo, Woody De Othello and previous talk art guests Grace and Perry and Lindsay Mendes.
0:57.9	Woo woo! So Booktick is now to see Strange Clay Ceramic's In Contemporary Art at the Hayward Gallery.
1:06.6	Hi buddy, welcome to Dance and Noose History. It's great episode for his day. Dr. Lindsay Fitz Harris
1:10.4	who've heard of her before on the podcast. She taught beautifully about the history of medicine
1:14.7	fascinating about the history of surgery and how until so recently if we put our lives in the hands
1:19.6	of surgeons we are frankly rolling the dice. They were fantastically incompetent. Well,
1:24.2	let's change thank goodness science is a beautiful thing and Dr. Fitz Harris's work really helps us
1:28.8	understand how medicine and science has evolved over the past 150 years. Quite extraordinary.
1:34.0	In this conversation with Lindsay recorded at the Chalk Valley History Festival so you may hear
1:38.0	some festival goes. You may hear some wind. You may hear some flags flapping. You may hear the
1:42.8	Victorian merry go round, parping away in the distance. But I want to bring this conversation
1:48.2	anyway because it's completely fascinating. We talked about the face maker. We talked about the
1:52.0	man who basically invented cosmetic surgery and this was not friends for Instagram influencers.
1:58.4	You'll be surprised to know this was for heroic men who would horrifically injured in the battles
2:03.1	of the First World War. Medicine could now save them where previously they would have
2:07.2	died a horrible lingering death but their faces in many cases were grotesque disfigured.
	...

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