This 1911 plastic surgery procedure is not for the weak of heart or stomach. The process describes cutting away malformed jaw muscle and attaching the arm to the patient’s face.
Surgery Triumph
Boy’s Arm Attached to His Face to Give Him a Lower Lip and Chin
Memphis, Tenn., Nov. 11 — By cutting his throat and binding his right arm to the part of the throat thus opened, two Memphis physicians have supplied J. Allen Hart with a new mouth and chin. The operation is considered one of the most dangerous feats in plastic surgery ever performed.
Hart, now 19, has had no lower lip since he was two years old, when gangrene, following salivation, ate away the flesh of the lower part of his face, leaving his lower teeth wholly exposed and causing muscles of the interior of his mouth to grow to the lower jaw so that his mouth was half closed.
The operation involved first the cutting of the lower jaw free by splitting the mouth to its original proportion. Next the throat was split open and the flap used to form the inner part of the lower lip and thus sewed to the muscles of the interior of the mouth.
Then the patient’s right arm was bound over his head so that the muscles thereof covered the flesh exposed by the cutting.
After about three weeks the arm will be cut free and Hart will face the world with a new set of features.
The operation lasted several hours. It was witnessed by scores of interested physicians.
All Hart’s trouble was caused by a sour pickle eaten after he had been given calomel.
[Source: (1911, November 16). Surgery triumph. The Day Book, pgs. 20-21.]
