THIS year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Archibald McIndoe, the surgeon whose pioneering work on badly-burned airmen in WWII is credited with the invention of modern plastic surgery.

To mark the half-centenary volunteers at the town museum have begun storing and cataloguing artifacts relating to McIndoe’ career which have been donated by the Queen Victoria hospital.

The internationally-important collection will eventually be housed in a new museum extension, but before then a series of temporary exhibits will make some of the items available to a much wider public for the first time.

McIndoe was born on 4 May 1900 in Dunedin, New Zealand. His father John was a printer and his mother was the artist Mabel Hill.

He studied medicine at the University of Otago and after graduation became a house surgeon at Waikato Hospital.

On 31 July, 1924 he married Adonia Aitken with whom he had two daughters and that same year was awarded a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in the United States to study pathological anatomy.

He worked at the clinic between 1925-1927 and published several papers on chronic liver disease before moving to London in 1930.

In 1932 he became General Surgeon and Lecturer at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Two years later he received a Fellowship of the American College of Surgeons, where he worked until 1939 when he was appointed as a consulting plastic surgeon to the Royal North Stafford Infirmary and to Croydon General Hospital.

In 1938 McIndoe became consultant in plastic surgery to the Royal Air Force and with the outbreak of war moved to the rebuilt Queen Victoria hospital in East Grinstead where he founded a Centre for Plastic and Jaw Surgery.

There he treated very deep burns and serious facial disfigurements like the loss of eyelids among airmen who had been badly burned in combat.

His patients proudly dubbed themselves McIndoe’s Guinea Pigs, and their exclusive Club included RAF pilot Richard Hillary, the author of The Last Enemy, and the comedian Jimmy Edwards.

McIndoe was a brilliant and quick surgeon who not only developed new techniques for treating badly-burned faces and hands but also recognised the importance of rehabilitating casualties back into normal life.

He disposed of his patients’ ‘convalescent uniforms’ and let the men wear their service uniforms instead, did away with many of the formalities of hospital life during stays which often lasted months, and with the help of friends Neville and Elaine Blond, he convinced East Grinstead residents to support the patients and invite them to their homes.

He was also shameless in pulling strings and calling in favours to make sure “his boys” found post-war employment.

Called The Boss or The Maestro by his staff, McIndoe’s pioneering work included the 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 latter discovery was a happy conclusion drawn from his observation of the differential healing rates in pilots who had come down on land and in the sea.

McIndoe was created a CBE in 1944, and after the war his remarkable work earned him a number of British and foreign honours, including a knighthood.

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 the following year.

McIndoe, who helped found the British Association of Plastic Surgeons (BAPS) and later served as its third President, died on 11 April 1960, aged 59, in his sleep.

He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in the Royal Air Force church of St Clement Danes in London.

The QVH’s Blond McIndoe Centre, named in his honour, was opened on 22 May, 1961.

Now renamed the Blond McIndoe Research Foundation, it continues his work into pioneering treatments to improve wound healing.

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