The Guinea Pig Club
There are so many incredible stories in medical history, especially when it comes to plastic surgery and cosmetic medicine. As I’ve discussed previously, the origin of a lot of aesthetic medical techniques come from the horrific injuries sustained during the World Wars and the innovation and brilliance of the clinicians who tried to treat them.
One of my favourite stories is about the Guinea Pig Club.
Who Were They?
The Guinea Pig Club was a group of British airmen who were treated for severe burns at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, England, during World War II. The club was founded in 1941 by Archibald McIndoe, a New Zealand-born plastic surgeon who worked at the hospital.
The airmen who were treated at the Queen Victoria Hospital had sustained severe burns as a result of being shot down in combat or crashing their planes. Many of them had undergone multiple surgeries and were left with scarring and disfigurements. McIndoe and his team of surgeons pioneered a number of innovative techniques for treating burns and reconstructing the faces and hands of the airmen, using skin grafts and other plastic surgery techniques.
The Guinea Pig Club was named after the nickname given to the airmen by their surgeons, who referred to them as "guinea pigs" because they were often the first to receive new treatments and procedures. The club provided a sense of camaraderie and support for the airmen as they went through their surgeries and recovery. It also served as a way for them to share their experiences and to provide mutual support and encouragement.
The Guinea Pig Club was active until the end of World War II, and its members included over 600 airmen from Great Britain, the Commonwealth, and other allied countries. Many of the members remained in touch after the war and continued to meet on a regular basis. The club was disbanded in the 1990s, but its legacy lives on as a testament to the bravery and resilience of the men who were treated at the Queen Victoria Hospital during World War II.
Check out our summary slides below:
On the night the veil between the living and the dead is supposed to thin, it feels only right to tell you about the people who made their living crossing it — the grave robbers whose grim, illegal trade quietly built the anatomical knowledge that every modern surgeon and doctor, myself included, still relies on.
In the gaslit churchyards of 18th- and 19th-century Britain, there worked a profession that doesn't make it onto many career-day posters: the resurrection men. Grave robbers, body snatchers, "sack-'em-up men" — whatever you called them, their job was to dig up the very freshly buried and sell them, by night, to the anatomy schools. It's a properly macabre story. It's also, uncomfortably, one of the reasons I can do my job safely. Bear with me.