The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I [L0089]

2023 - PB Excellent condition. A New York Times Bestseller "Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey Fitzharris hit this one out of the park." -Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile Lindsey Fitzharris, the award-winning author of The Butchering Art, presents the compelling, true story of a visionary surgeon who rebuilt the faces of the First World War's injured heroes, and in the process ushered in the modern era of plastic surgery. From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. Lindsey Fitzharris's The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers under his care. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. The Facemaker places Gillies's ingenious surgical innovations alongside the dramatic stories of soldiers whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how medicine can be an art, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "There are so few medical history books that deserve five stars, but this is one book that I wish I could give more than five stars. This book doesn't flinch when it comes to demonstrating the horrors of war. If the verbal descriptions don't shake the reader to the core, the photographs certainly will. Given the fact that Dr Gillies was working in an era of surgery where penicillin and other antibiotics we've come to depend on won't be available until the next World War, he does a remarkable job of reconstructing the faces destroyed by gunfire; many times, having to invent new techniques. While the photographs are difficult to look at even today, his work is remarkable."; "Lindsey Fitzharris is deftly carving out a place at the top of the list of medical historical authors. Her new book focuses on the pioneering plastic surgeon, Harold Gillies, whose work in a dedicated hospital in England with soldiers disfigured by terrible new weapons in use in World War I led to rapid improvements in facial reconstructive surgery. Fitzharris is an excellent writer who weaves into her compelling and richly researched narrative many personal stories and anecdotes from diaries and other written documents. An excellent book."; "Fitzharris tells Gillies' tale through the story of a handful of individuals, some pilots, some sailors and other who had been left on the Somme battlefield for days before being rescued. She takes the reader of a guided tour of how he did it, with skin and bone grafts, but also the pioneering psychological aftercare with the men having some sort 'life' mixing with each other, as no one else could. Gillies' pioneering work has given birth to the field of plastic surgery. Gillies went private after the war and performed the first female-to-male gender reassignment procedure in 1949. Millions are helped due to his work and for this he should be remembered in history."