Lewis Bust

This bronze bust from 1960 is of Plastic Surgeon Emlyn Lewis, by his son in law, noted sculptor and artist, Barry Flanagan.

Lewis was a member of the provisional committee, a group of second-generation plastic surgeons, set up in 1944 under chair John Barron, to derive both the constitution and name of the new Association for plastic surgery in Britain. He is also responsible for BAPRAS having the instrument set of German nasal surgery pioneer Jacques Joseph. Lewis operated upon the Dupuytren’s contracture of émigré Dr Frederick Kohn, one-time associate of Joseph to whom he had been given an instrument set for safe keeping. Grateful for the work upon his hand, and with Joseph dead, Kohn gave them to Lewis who in turn donated them to BAPS.

Beleived to be one of three produced, the bust was for many years a feature of the Welsh unit in Chepstow, standing on the desk of consultant Michael Tempest. It also featured on a plinth next to the speaker’s dais whenever BAPS met in Wales. After the Chepstow unit moved to Swansea, the bust was donated by them to BAPRAS in 2018.

Born in 1910 in the United States, Lewis was educated and brought up in Monmouth, Wales. Qualifying from St Mary’s hospital in London, he initially trained in general surgery. He was trained in plastic surgery at the start of the second world war and was then in charge of the Emergency Medical Services hospital in Gloucester. This moved and became the Chepstow unit when the NHS came into being in 1948. 

Lewis was a burns surgeon and wrote several papers advancing knowledge in this topic. He gained extensive experience in burns though the war and following not infrequent explosions in the Welsh coal industry. He died in 1969.