Graham Trevose is an ardent pioneer of reconstructive surgery having seen its huge benefit under the hands of a talented American surgeon. However London is not America and this new form of treatment is received with deep suspicion by orthodox medicine. It is seen as defying God’s will and interfering with matters entirely out of bounds. Yet Trevose is completely committed to this work and uses it to help those in desperate need — whilst also benefiting from performing plastic surgery on the rich and famous.The ethical debates which perplexed medical men in post-First-World-War London are surely the very ones that today’s doctors are grappling with as they face the issues of human cloning, animal organ transplants and embryo-screening. Richard Gordon’s The Facemaker is as relevant today as it ever was.
