Winding Down
The Guinea Pig Club has held its last formal get together and dinner. A remarkable group of men with a remarkable history and ties to a truly remarkable surgeon has dwindled now to only 97 living members left from the original 649. The youngest of them is 82. They are fading away now.
The Guinea Pig Club held its 66th and last annual dinner on Saturday in the presence of Prince Philip, its president.
Its members were RAF pilots or bomber crew disfigured by blazes who had their faces rebuilt and confidence boosted by the surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe.
But with the youngest aged 82 and the oldest 102, the club has decided to end the yearly social weekend which sees members fly in from across the world.
Sir Archibald McIndoe pioneered many plastic surgery techniques for the treatment of severe burns. But the genesis of the Guinea Pig Club is part of his real treatment of the badly wounded men he helped. Because he treated more than their burns - he treated their very souls.
Also in the early days of plastic surgery for burns, there was little emphasis on reintegration of patients back into normal life after treatment. The Guinea Pig Club was the result of McIndoe's efforts to make life in the hospital easy for his patients and to begin to rebuild them psychologically in preparation for life outside the hospital. He expected many to stay in the hospital for several years and undergo many reconstructive operations, so he set out to make their stay in hospital relaxed and socially productive.
Unlike many military hospitals at the time or since, patients were encouraged to lead as normal a life as possible. They could wear their usual clothes or service uniforms instead of "convalescent blues" and were able to leave the hospital at will. There were even barrels of beer in wards to encourage an informal and happy atmosphere. McIndoe also convinced some of the local families in East Grinstead to accept his patients as guests and other residents to treat them as normally as possible. East Grinstead became "the town that did not stare".
How much better did he make those wounded men's lives?
World news | Gaius Sunday, 14 October , 2007
By Americaneocon, Sunday, 14 October , 2007 @ 7:50 pm
You’re doing a nice service with these posts. I enjoy them and learn a great deal. It’s good to keep this history strong.
Thanks for this.
By Gaius, Sunday, 14 October , 2007 @ 7:55 pm
Thanks for the kind words. They are appreciated.