Page 24 - BHTA 100 years

A letter from a Surgeon...
In December 1967, the Association considered a letter that had been received from Mr Charles Heanley, Consultant Surgeon at Worthing Hospital. He wrote....
“I do not know who is responsible for the naming of surgical instruments, but I think that the wishes of the dead should be to a certain extent considered.
It was originally decided between Mr Harold Gillies and Mr Archibald McIndoe that the Gillies toothed forceps should have the traverse grooving and the McIndoe forceps should have the longitudinal grooving on the handle This was so the surgeon, when he was wearing special glasses for near vision, could recognise the toothed from the non-toothed forceps, when they were placed on their sides, quite easily at a distance.
First of all, some instrument maker, who was not conversant with this, put on what he called a toothed McIndoe with a longitudinal ridge and now I understand someone equally clueless has put on a non-toothed Gillies which, of course, defeats the whole object of the exercise.”
Mr Heanley was a founder member of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons and went on to become the head of the department of plastic surgery at the London Hospital.
Both Sir Harold Gillies and Archibald McIndoe were from New Zealand. Sir Harold became known as the father of plastic surgery and in 1946, he and a colleague carried out one of the rst sex reassignment surgeries. Archibald McIndoe was Sir Henry’s cousin and developed new techniques for treating badly burned faces and hands.
BHTA 100 years