Archibald McIndoe

Dr Sir Archibald McIndoe CBE FRCS (May 4, 1900 - April 11, 1960) was a plastic surgeon who worked for the Royal Air Force during World War II. He greatly improved the treatment and rehabilitation of badly burned aircrew.

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Background

Sir Archibald McIndoe was born May 4 1900 in Dunedin, New Zealand, into a family of four. His father was a printer. McIndoe studied at Otago Boys' High School and later medicine at the University of Otago. After his graduation he became a house surgeon at Waikato Hospital. On July 31 1924 he married Adonia Aitken and they later had two daughters.

In 1924 McIndoe was awarded a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in the United States to study pathological anatomy. He worked in the clinic as First Assistant in Pathological Anatomy 1925-1927 and published several papers on chronic liver disease. Impressed with his skill, Lord Moynihan suggested a career in England, and in 1930 McIndoe moved to London.

When McIndoe could not find work, his cousin Sir Harold Gillies, a plastic surgeon, invited him to join the private practice he ran with Rainsford Mowlem and offered him a job at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he became a clinical assistant. In 1932 McIndoe received a permanent appointment as a General Surgeon and Lecturer at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1934, McIndoe received a Fellowship of the American College of Surgeons, where he worked until 1939. That year he became a consulting plastic surgeon to the Royal North Stafford Infirmary and to Croydon General Hospital. In 1938 he was appointed consultant in plastic surgery to the Royal Air Force.

World War II

When World War II broke out plastic surgery was largely divided on service lines. Gillies went to Rooksdown House near Basingstoke, which became the principal army plastic surgery unit; Tommy Kilner (who had worked with Gillies during the First World War) went to Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, and Mowlem to St Albans. McIndoe moved to the recently rebuilt Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Sussex, and founded a Centre for Plastic and Jaw Surgery. There, he treated very deep burns and serious facial disfigurement like loss of eyelids. Patients at the hospital formed the Guinea Pig Club. Among the better known members of his "club" were Richard Hillary and Jimmy Edwards.

McIndoe was a brilliant and quick surgeon. He not only developed new techniques for treating badly burned faces and hands but also recognised the importance of the rehabilitation of the casualties and particularly of social reintegration back into normal life. He disposed of the "convalescent uniforms" and let the patients use their service uniforms instead. With the help of two friends, Neville and Elaine Blond, he also convinced the locals to support the patients and invited them to their homes. McIndoe kept referring to them as "his boys" and the staff called him "The Boss" or "The Maestro".

Important work included development of the walking-stalk skin graft, and the discovery that immersion in salt water promoted healing as well as improving survival rates for victims with extensive burns.

Later years

McIndoe was created CBE in 1944 and after the war he received a number of British and foreign honours, including a knighthood in 1947 for his remarkable work on restoring the minds and bodies of the burnt young pilots of World War II through his innovative reconstructive surgery techniques. That same year he visited East Africa for the first time, and took up farming on Kilimanjaro. It was here in 1956 with his two former pupils, Michael Wood and Tom Rees, that the dream of AMREF was be born.

He became a member of a council of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1946 and its president in 1958. His marriage to Adonia ended in 1953, and he married Constance Belcham in 1954.

In 1958 McIndoe was a Bradshaw lecturer about facial burns, a subject he knew well. He took part in the founding of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons (BAPS) and later served as its third President.

Archibald McIndoe died 11-12 April 1960 in his sleep. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in the Royal Air Force church of St Clement Danes just after helping set up AMREF in the UK..

On March 22 1961, the British Minister of Health opened the Blond McIndoe Centre named in his honour at the Queen Victoria Hospital. The Blond McIndoe Centre, now named the Blond McIndoe Research Foundation, continues research into pioneering treatments to improve wound healing.

Books

• Emily Mayhew - The Reconstruction of Warriors: Archibald McIndoe, The Royal Air Force and the Guinea Pig Club (2004)
• Mosley, L. - Faces from the fire: the biography of Sir Archibald McIndoe (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962)

Links

• Artists' Masks Hid Wounds of World War I Soldiers
• Blond McIndoe Research Foundation
• McIndoe Surgical Centre