Plastic Surgery of the Face; based on selected cases of war injuries of the face, including burns; with original illustrations

(no dust jacket) [moderate wear to extremities, binding intact, some soiling and light foxing to the edges of the text block, and a large round dampstain covering most of the upper half of the front cover and causing some wrinkling in the cloth; multiple stamps and inscription on front endpaper, attesting to the book's provenance (see Notes)]. (B&W photographs, diagrams) A landmark volume, by an author who's considered the father of modern plastic surgery. Sir Harold Gillies (1882-1960; knighted in 1930) received his medical education at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Originally trained as an Otolaryngologist (basically a head and neck specialist), at the outbreak of World War I he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, and during service in France he found the opportunity to visit the renowned oral surgeon Hippolyte Morestin in Paris and to observe some of his experimental work with skin grafts, which filled him with enthusiasm for the potential of restorative surgical techniques. Upon his return to England, he persuaded the army's chief surgeon to establish a facial injury ward at a hospital in Aldershot, to be devoted to the treatment of the increasing number of soldiers who had suffered grievous injuries in the war; the demand for such services proved overwhelming, and soon led to the establishment in 1917 of a new facility with over 1,000 convalescent beds, later known as Queen Mary's Hospital, at Sidcup. It was there that "Gillies and his colleagues developed many innovative plastic surgery techniques [and where] more than 11,000 operations were performed on over 5,000 men." (Wikipedia) This book is a compendium of the knowledge gained from this early surgical work, and also stands as a sobering testament to the horrific facial disfigurements suffered by men in the war. (Be warned, the book is not for the squeamish: there are hundreds of photographs, primarily head shots, of the men both before and after their surgeries.) The chapter headings are: (I) Principles: Historical; (II) Repair of the Cheek; (III) Injuries of the Upper Lip; (IV) Injuries of the Lower Lip and Chin; (V) Prosthetic Appliances in Relation to Plastic Surgery; (VI) Injuries of the Nose; (VII) Injuries in the Region of the Eyes, including Burns of the Face [and] Injuries to the Pinna; (VIII) Plastic Surgery in Civil Cases. In addition to its landmark status in the medical literature, what makes this copy of exceptional interest is the provenance: for starters, it bears a handwritten inscription by H. (Howard) L. Updegraff, who presented the book to Michael Gurdin, M.D., on September 15, 1938. Dr. Updegraff was a prominent surgeon in Hollywood, California; he had been the first plastic surgeon to be filmed in action using color film, in 1931, and a few years later served on a committee commissioned by J. Edgar Hoover to consider the likelihood of a person being able to obliterate their fingerprints. At the time of his unexpected death in August 1940, he was only 43 years old; Dr. Michael Gurdin, who was about fourteen years his junior, was either his partner or his protege: his property stamp appears twice in the front of the book, with the same business address as Dr. Updegraff. Dr. Gurdin himself (d. 1993) became quite prominent in the field, establishing his own practice in Beverly Hills after World War II. (And he earned a little posthumous notoriety in 2013, when some of his medical files were sold at auction, revealing that Marilyn Monroe had been among his clients.) The book had one more interesting owner after it passed through the hands of Dr. Gurdin: the renowned M-G-M makeup wizard William Tuttle, from whose estate this copy was acquired. (Tuttle's rubber-stamped signature also adorns the front endpaper.) It's not hard to discern what Tuttle's interest would have been in the intricacies of facial reconstruction, although his particular focus would rather have been on concocting convincing facial fakery for the Hollywood movie cameras.…