History

A formal plastic surgery training program was not available in Boston until 1967, when the first residency was established by Joseph E. Murray at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Children's Hospital. Nonetheless, reconstructive surgery at Harvard has a long and notable history within the disciplines of general surgery and dentistry. John Collins Warren (1778-1856) repaired palatal clefts at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His son, Jonathan Mason Warren (1811-1867), is remembered as Boston's first plastic surgeon. He brought the techniques of reconstructive surgery from Europe to America and wrote about skin grafts, cleft lip/palate repair, syndactyly release, and flap reconstruction of nose, lip, and eyelid defects. He published his account of the first rhinoplasty in America in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on March 8, 1837. In addition to being an accomplished sculptor, George H. Monks (1853-1933) specialized in the care of patients suffering from disfiguring facial injuries and published the first report of the application of an axially-supplied temporalis flap for eyelid reconstruction. He was the founder and first president of the Boston Surgical Society.

At the Brigham, John Homans (1887-1954) used skin grafts in the treatment of ulcers of the extremities. William E. Ladd (1880-1967), the pioneer pediatric surgeon, devised plastic surgical techniques for congenital anomalies at Children's Hospital. Ladd was a founding member of the American Board of Plastic Surgery and of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons. Later, Donald MacCollum (1908-1987) concentrated on children with cleft lip and palate, and developed the plastic surgical clinic at Children's Hospital.

V.H. Kazanjian (1879-1974) graduated from Harvard Dental School in 1905 and quickly became an authority on the management of mandibular fractures through his development of the intermaxillary wiring method of fixation. During World War I, he applied his dental expertise to the care of soldiers suffering from combat-related facial injuries. Upon returning to America, he completed his education at Harvard Medical School and afterward assumed leadership of the combined Plastic Surgery Clinic of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1941, he became the first Professor of Plastic Surgery at the Harvard Medical School and continued to make monumental contributions to the field of dental and maxillofacial surgery until the time of his death. Ernest Daland (1891-1981) devoted his active surgical career to the treatment of cancer, and refined plastic surgical procedures for the head and neck regions.

After World War II, Bradford Cannon (1907-2005) began to teach the principles and practice of plastic surgery to an entire generation of residents in general surgery, orthopedics and neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Drawing heavily on his prior experience in Saint Louis and Valley Forge, he quickly became an internationally recognized authority on the care of burn patients, most notably exemplified in his treatment of multiple victims of the devastating Cocoanut Grove fire in 1942. He began the first plastic surgical training program at the MGH as an apprentice system in the early 1960's that was ultimately integrated with the Department of Surgery as a formal Division of Plastic Surgery in 1971. Dr. Cannon was the first chairman of the Plastic Surgery Residency Program at the MGH. He was succeeded by John Remensnyder (1931-2006) in 1973.

Contemporaneous with the contributions of Dr. Cannon were those of Dr. Murray. Having served with Dr. Cannon at Valley Forge, Dr. Murray left the military in 1947 in order to complete his training in general surgery and plastic surgery at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and New York and Memorial Hospitals. He quickly became enamored with the challenges of skin grafting and tissue transplantation and, upon returning to the Brigham in 1951, joined a team of researchers focused on these matters. In 1954, he performed the world's first successful renal transplantation between the identical Herrick twins at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, followed shortly by the world's first successful allograft (1959) and the world's first cadaveric renal transplantation (1962). In 1966, he performed the first midface advancement in the United States and subsequently established the craniofacial program at Children's Hospital. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his contributions to organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease. He continues to write, teach and lecture around the world.

In 1972, the third residency program in plastic surgery at Harvard Medical School was instituted at the Cambridge Hospital by Francis Wolfort (1932-2003). It was later centered at the Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center and included Dr. Robert Goldwyn and his staff. In 1999, the Harvard Plastic Surgery Training Program was formed by combining the programs at the Brigham/Children's, Beth Israel/Deaconess and Massachusetts General Hospitals. Dr. Julian Pribaz has been the Program Director since its inception.