The Dunedin Connection
New Zealand may be able to lay claim to being responsible for the establishment of organised Plastic Surgery as a specialty in its own right.
Of the so-called “Big Four” plastic surgeons in Britain at the start of the Second World War, three - Gillies, McIndoe and Mowlem, were expatriate New Zealanders with deep connections to Dunedin, home of the University of Otago. In 1871, Otago became the first University in New Zealand, graduating its intial doctors in 1883.
Both Harold Gillies and Archibald McIndoe were born there into families who had migrated to New Zealand from Scotland in the mid 19 century. Dunedin had been founded as a new Scottish Presbyterian settlement in 1842, its name coming from the Gaelic for “Edinburgh”. It therefore became known as the “New Edinburgh in the Antipodes”. Gillies left home quite early in life, travelling to Britain for some of his schooling, before going on to University at Cambridge and Medicine at St Bartholomew’s in London. Both Archibald McIndoe and Rainsford Mowlem studied medicine at the University of Otago.
Gillies remained in Britain, qualifying as an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist, being sent to Northern France when the First World War broke out shortly afterwards. There he determined that new skills were required to meet the demand for managing the large number of severe facial injuries which the conflict generated. Returning to Britain he persuaded the military authorities to establish facilities for doing just that, initially at Aldershot and then more substantially at the Queens, Hospital, Sidcup in Kent.
McIndoe, who was a cousin of Gillies, but not closely related, won a scholarship from Otago to train at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, becoming an adept hepato-biliary (liver) surgeon. He devised a technique for partial resection of the liver for which he gained some worldwide recognition. Only by misjudging the offer of a job in London, did he end up on Gillies’ doorstep after the war, asking for help in finding employment. Only after some months did the course of his career change to plastic surgery when Gillies took him on as a junior assistant.
Arthur Rainsford Mowlem started his career as a general surgeon too. Born in Auckland, he travelled to Britain as a ship’s doctor in search of additional training. After some time, he was about to return home, until taking on a temporary post looking after some of Gillies’ beds at Hammersmith hospital. Like, McIndoe, one year his senior at Otago, having witnessed some of Gillies’ work, Mowlem had his eyes opened to the possibilities of plastic surgery techniques. He too went into partnership with Gillies and McIndoe, before being put in charge of Hill End Hospital, St Albans during World War 2, turning it into a significant centre for research and training.
But it didn’t end there. Whilst Henry Pickerill, a British trained dental surgeon, (today he would be considered a maxillofacial surgeon, but never achieved higher surgical qualifications) was born in Britain, he had emigrated to New Zealand after qualifying in medicine and dentistry. He had become Director of Dunedin’s new Dental School and Hospital before the war. Pickerill went on to be its first Dean. As Major Pickerill, he was in command of the No.2 New Zealand Hospital when it was transferred to Sidcup in 1918. He became influential at Sidcup, generating somewhat of a rivalry with Gillies, and becoming well known for describing novel reconstructive facial procedures for the upper lip.
Thus, whilst often being assumed to be of British origin, four New Zealanders, all with connections to Dunedin, played a huge role in the establishment and future direction of Plastic and Maxillo-facial surgery.