At the club meeting of Thursday, October 29, Dr Robert Galway presented his stimulating talk entitled “More than a Mouthful: The Architect of Reconstruction, The Life, Crucible, and Legacy of Dr. E. Fulton Risdon, the Father of Canadian Plastic Surgery”
Fulton Risdon (1880 – 1968) was a graduate in dentistry and medicine from the University of Toronto. During the First World War, he served with the Canadian Army Medical Corp, joining Sir Harold Gillies’s unit at Queen’s Hospital in Sidcup, England, a major centre devoted to facial reconstructive surgery.
[Photo courtesy of the University of Toronto Division of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery]
After the war, Risdon returned to Canada and established his practice in Toronto in 1921, becoming the city’s first plastic surgeon. He served at the Toronto Western Hospital for 45 years and was a founding member and later president of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons (1921), the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (1932), and the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons (1947), though, as Dr Galway pointed out, never had an appointment at the University of Toronto. Risdon contributed many innovative procedures including the use of iliac crest bone graft for fractures of the jaw, the Risdon incision and the Risdon cable arch method of inter maxillary fixation.
A lively discussion ensued after Dr Galway’s detailed and polished presentation.
