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(1/13) THREAD 👇 In preparation for my next book on the history of plastic surgery, I’m immersing myself in diaries, letters, & literature from WWI to get a sense of what it was like to live and die in the blood-soaked trenches on the Western Front. Photo: Canadian War Museum 
(2/13) The various ways these soldiers could be injured or killed was astonishing. Probably some of the most horrific stories involve men who died after sinking into the copious amounts of mud that filled the trenches and foxholes.
(3/13) In October 1917, Sergeant T. Berry watched a man slowly drown: “He kept begging us to shoot him. But we couldn’t shoot him. Who could shoot him? We stayed with him, watching him go down in the mud. And he died.”
(4/13) Even when medical aid was close at hand, stretcher-bearers struggled to get to the wounded, prevented by enemy fire or by the conditions themselves. Wheeled carts designed during this period to transport the injured were mostly useless on the blasted terrain.
(5/13) When Private W. Lugg picked up a man during the Battle of Passchendaele, it took him ten hours to travel 400 meters across the mud to an aid post. I was astounded to discover that more than 6,000 doctors died and another 17,000 were wounded in the British Army alone.
(6/13) My book will follow the story of the eccentric surgeon Harold Gillies, who helped rebuild solders’ faces in the wake of the devastation caused by WWI. Today, he is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Modern Plastic Surgery.”
(7/13) The human wreckage caused by WWI was inescapable. Many soldiers were shot in the face simply because they had no clue what to expect from trench warfare. Robbed of their very identities, they came to symbolize the ugly face of a new, mechanized form of war.
(8/13) Louis Barthas remembered when his comrade was hit: “We stood there a moment, horrified: the man had almost no face left; a bullet had hit his mouth and exploded, blasting through his cheeks, shattering his jaws, ripping out his tongue...and the blood gushed abundantly.”
(9/13) Surgeons were met with the overwhelming task of treating scores of men who were barely recognizable to themselves or their families at a time when reconstructive surgery was still in its infancy. Indeed, this branch of medicine owes much to advances made during WWI.
(10/13) One of the big challenges Gillies faced in the operating theater was the administration of general anesthesia, which required the patient to lie on his back. Respiratory obstruction was common due to the tongue sliding back into the throat. Image: @ExploreWellcome
(11/13) After his jaw was shattered, John Glubb [here] found himself in surgery: “I had apparently nearly swallowed my tongue during the operation and, to prevent this, [the surgeon] had pierced my tongue and threaded a wire through it with a wooden rod on the end of it.”
(12/13) And then there was the reconstruction itself. With no textbooks to guide him, and no mentors to consult, Gillies had to rely on his imagination to help him visualize solutions to the problems set before him.
(13/13) This is an epic tale, which I’m excited to share with you. The book is slow going at the moment due to the wealth of research material, but I hope you’ll think it’s worth the wait. Tomorrow is my birthday, so I may be quiet, but wishing you all a happy & safe weekend!
