The Inter-War Years

In the period after the First World War, plastic surgery in Britain floundered.

There was a fight to keep the specialty alive in an atmosphere where the attitude of the surgical profession to this new specialty was indifferent.

Whereas in other countries, particularly North America, the postwar period saw a rapid expansion of plastic surgery services and surgeons, in Britain there was a real struggle to keep it alive. From the start the medical profession struggled with the justifying of plastic surgery.

It was widely accepted that operations which did not include the curing of disease by removing or re-plumbing something were unnecessary. In a review of Gillies first book “Plastic Surgery of the Face” published in 1920 by the Lancet medical journal, the anonymous reviewer remarked that “the general application of the same methods to the conditions met within civil practice is of immediate importance although the time may hardly be ripe for a department of plastic surgery in a general hospital. The defacement of hereditary disease and accident are insignificant compared with the results of high explosives.”

Gillies and Kilner, later to be joined by Mowlem and McIndoe would be forced to travel to any number of outlying and distant General hospitals, operating in less-than-ideal circumstances with no real after-care, just to prove the worthwhile nature of plastic surgery.