[Civil War Facial Reconstruction] History of a Case of Partial Reconstruction of the Face

The First Case of Successful Total Facial Reconstruction Landmark 1864 Plastic Surgery Offprint Documenting Civil War Facial Reconstruction With Lithograph Plates Based on Before-and-After Photographs This rare 1864 medi. Octavo. Original printed paper wrappers. Wrappers worn with slight corner loss to lower right to front wrapper, chipping and short tears along margins, and spine splits. Lithographic plates and interior pages intact with minor marginal wear. 16 pages plus 7 lithographed plates after photographs. The First Case of Successful Total Facial ReconstructionLandmark 1864 Plastic Surgery Offprint Documenting Civil War Facial ReconstructionWith Lithograph Plates Based on Before-and-After PhotographsThis rare 1864 medical offprint records one of the most celebrated achievements in early American plastic surgery, authored by Dr. Gurdon Buck (1807–1877), senior surgeon at New York Hospital and a pioneer of reconstructive surgery. Buck documents his multi-stage surgical restoration of Private Carleton Burgan, a Union Army soldier of Company B, Purnell’s Maryland Legion, who suffered devastating facial destruction during the Civil War.While hospitalized for pneumonia in 1862, Burgan received massive doses of calomel that induced severe mercurial gangrene, destroying much of his right cheek, upper jaw, and palate. Beginning in late 1862, Buck performed a remarkable series of five operations using advancement and pedicle flaps from the cheek and forehead to reconstruct the lip, mouth, cheek, and adjacent portions of the nose. He collaborated with dentist Dr. Thomas B. Gunning, who fabricated prosthetic appliances of vulcanized rubber to replace lost portions of the upper jaw and palate.The seven finely executed lithographic plates are particularly significant as early examples of the use of clinical photography to document reconstructive surgery. Based on photographs taken before and after successive operations, they provide a detailed visual record of Burgan’s injuries and the stages of his reconstruction. Buck was among the earliest American surgeons to employ photography in this manner, using the new medium not merely to illustrate anatomical conditions but to document and demonstrate the results of surgical intervention.Printed in Albany by Van Benthuysen as a separate offprint from the Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York, this rare first separate edition preserves Buck’s original account, published more than a decade before its incorporation into his influential 1876 textbook, Contributions to Reparative Surgery. Medical historian Ira Rutkow characterizes Burgan’s case as Buck’s "greatest reconstructive triumph," while later histories of plastic surgery have recognized the operation as a landmark in the development of modern facial reconstruction. The pamphlet is notable both for its technical innovations and for its pioneering use of photographic evidence in nineteenth-century surgical literature.RarityThe pamphlet is rare on the market.RBH lists 1 copy (Swann, 1981 - $260).…