Reproduction
Object numberRCSHM/Z 172
CollectionCollege Museum
CategoryModels and casts, Visual works
DescriptionWax teaching model of a man’s head and shoulders illustrating skin flaps, pedicles, and other facial reconstructive surgical procedures, made by Sergeant Thomas H. Kelsey during the First World War for the New Zealand Medical Corps facial and jaw injury unit, based at Walton-on-Thames.
In 1918 the unit, led by Henry Pickerill, was transferred to the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup - a pioneering plastic surgery unit that had been established by surgeon Harold Gillies in 1917. The hospital’s medical staff were organised on national lines, with contingents from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This teaching model was used to train surgeons from the New Zealand section in the new plastic surgery techniques.
After the War the wax model and the New Zealand patient records travelled with Pickerill to Dunedin. There it was part of a collection of 140 models, casts and moluages, including at least four busts like this one. After the collection fell into disuse oral surgeon A.D. [Sandy] Macalister rescued many of the records and this model, sending them to the UK in 1990 to the care of Andrew Bamji, Honorary Archivist of the Gillies Archive.
During this second spell at Sidcup the model impacted upon the RCS by inspiring medical artist Eleanor Crook’s sculpture commissioned to be in the 2005 Hunterian Museum redisplay.
Production date 1918
Associated institution
transferred
Related objectsRCSHM/Z 172.1
Physical Location
LocationOn display in the Hunterian Museum, Room 7: Modern Surgery
Physical Information
Physical descriptionWax model on wooden base. Dimensions including base: 440mm l x 250mm w x 775mm h.
Dimensions
whole length: 440 mm
whole width: 250 mm
whole height: 775 mm
whole width: 250 mm
whole height: 775 mm
