Archibald McIndoe

Sir Archibald Hector McIndoe (4 May 1900 – 11 April 1960) was a New Zealand plastic surgeon who worked for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

He improved the treatment and rehabilitation of badly burned aircrew.

Archibald McIndoe was born 4 May 1900 in Forbury, in Dunedin, New Zealand, into a family of four.

His father was John McIndoe, a printer and his mother was the artist Mabel McIndoe née Hill.

He had three brothers and one sister.

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.

In 1924 McIndoe was awarded the first New Zealand Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in the United States to study pathological anatomy.

The fellowship was for an unmarried doctor and as McIndoe had recently married Adonia Aitkin they had to keep their marriage secret and he sailed without her.

When it was no longer possible to maintain the secret she joined him 12 months later.

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 Britain, and in 1930 McIndoe moved to London.

When McIndoe could not find work, his cousin Sir Harold Gillies, an otolaryngologist specialising in plastic surgery (who now has an operation for reducing a broken cheekbone named after himself), 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.

When the Second World War 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, and who now has a surgical instrument named after him, the kilner cheek retractor), 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.

With McIndoe's support, patients at the hospital formed the Guinea Pig Club, a social club and mutual support network: members included Richard Hillary, Geoffrey Page, Bill Foxley 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 encouraged the locals to support the patients and invite them to their homes.

McIndoe referred to the patients as "his boys", while 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 saline promoted healing as well as improving survival rates for victims with extensive burns – this was a serendipitous discovery drawn from observation of differential healing rates in pilots who had come down on land and in the sea.

After the end of the war McIndoe returned to private practice.

His speciality was the "McIndoe nose".

McIndoe was created CBE in 1944 and after the war he received a number of British and foreign honours, including a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur (Commander of the Legion of Honour) and was knighted in 1947 for his remarkable work on restoring the minds and bodies of the burnt young pilots of the Second World War through his innovative reconstructive surgery techniques.

That same year he visited East Africa for the first time, and took up farming on Kilimanjaro.

He became a member of a council of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1946 and its vice-president in 1958.

His marriage to Adonia ended in 1953, and he married Constance Belchem in 1954.

In 1957, with two former pupils, Michael Wood and Tom Rees, he co-founded the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF).

In 1958 McIndoe delivered the Bradshaw Lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons on the topic of the reconstruction of the burned face.

He took part in the founding of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons (BAPS) and later served as its third President.

The Guinea Pig Club continued to meet after the war, and McIndoe remained its President until his death.

Archibald McIndoe died in his sleep of a heart attack on 11 April 1960, aged 59, in his house at 84 Albion Gate, London.

He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, and his ashes were given the unique honour for a civilian of being buried at the Royal Air Force church of St Clement Danes in London.