Medicine: Blacksmith Surgery

A seaman on a British destroyer recently suffered a face wound which threatened to leave him grotesquely scarred for life. A surgeon on the battleship Rodney heard about it, remembered that he had once seen famed Plastic Surgeon Sir Harold Gillies demonstrate a technique which might avoid the disfigurement. There was one big hitch: the operation required an unusual surgical instrument known only in a few hospitals. The surgeon drew a rough sketch of the instrument, gave it to blacksmiths from the Rodney’s engine rooms. Within 45 minutes (on their third try) the blacksmiths successfully forged the instrument—which looked like a small tire iron—out of a steel rod. The ship’s coppersmiths plated it with tin. Two days later the wounded sailor returned unscarred to his destroyer.