A Surgeon for WWI and WWII Vets Also Helped a Trans Man
Lindsey Fitzharris’s new book ‘The Facemaker’
Released today (7 June 2022), Lindsey Fitzharris’s The Facemaker is about how the devastating violence of the First World War drove demand for facial reconstruction techniques, especially for soldiers who narrowly survived combat.
If you read all the way to the end, there’s a story about surgery for a trans man in the late 1940s.
Facial Reconstruction for World War I Veterans
“From the moment that the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front,” as the prologue to The Facemaker sets the stage, “one thing was clear: Europe’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bullets tore through the air at terrifying speeds.…Noses were blown off, jaws were shattered, tongues were torn out, and eyeballs were dislodged. In some cases, entire faces were obliterated.”
“Before the war was over,” Fitzharris goes on, “280,000 men from France, Germany, and Britain alone would suffer some form of facial trauma.”
If, here, we are to ask “Why?,” we have to note the question and answer would have to be very broad in scope because the violence was employed so extensively. These battles destroyed the landscape…
