The Scalpel

A plastic surgeon’s hand holds the scalpel with which they are about to make a skin incision.

This evocative cast by Professor Rowan Pritchard-Jones and Consultant Prosthetist Jane McPhail at Whiston Hospital on Merseyside, is formed in dental stone. 

The hand holds a genuine “Swann-Morton” scalpel handle fitted with a No.15 blade, almost “impossibly” incorporated within the cast. The instrument, blade and precise “pencil” grip demonstrated, are a configuration typically used by plastic surgeons when making precise incisions in skin.

This image is by Photographer John Heaton.