Saving Faces

chocolatine_volante

Mar 13, 2026

This was recommended by the site's resident doctor, Mr. litsalonuser.

What a fascinating account of plastic surgery during World War 1, following the story of pioneer plastic surgeon Harold Gillies. In particular, I think it does a great job at conveying the devastation of trench warfare and the suffering of soldiers who had their faces destroyed.

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Fitzharris is a good story teller of the facts but does an even better job at conveying the emotional side of suffering and the hope of becoming normal again.

There is one particularly sad story of Corporal X who caught a glimpse of his disfigured face in the mirror and faked an affair so that his lover wouldn't have to be stuck with him:

The future he had imagined for himself seemed to die with that glimpse of his reflection. He had internalized his society’s sense of repulsion at the sight of a disfigured face and had turned it on himself. He no longer felt worthy of love due to his altered appearance. Indeed, the ban on mirrors likely reinforced in him a feeling that his was a face not worth gazing upon. Black reckoned “he must have fought out his battle in the night.” The next morning, he asked her to post a letter addressed to Molly. After she had done so, Black returned to the ward and said to the young man, “You’re well enough to see her any time now. Why not let her come down?”

With sorrow in his voice, Corporal X answered quietly, “She will never come now.” He then told Black that he had lied to Molly in his letter, informing her that he had met a woman in Paris and had realized that their engagement was a mistake. “It wouldn’t be fair to let a girl like Molly be tied to a miserable wreck like me,” he said to Black. “I’m not going to let her sacrifice herself out of pity. This way she will never know".

Gillies is an admirable character who saw the importance of taking a multidisciplinary approach to fixing faces, recruiting artists, sculptors, dentists, etc to obtain the best results. He is largely responsible for establishing plastic surgery as a legitimate field in medicine and did much to share the knowledge and experience he gained with others.