Walter Yeo, Known as the First Person to Have Plastic Surgery

Walter Yeo , a British sailor during World War II, is often cited as the first known person to have benefited from plastic surgery .

Walter sustained terrible facial injuries , including the loss of his upper and lower eyelids , while manning the guns aboard HMS Warspite in 1916 during the Battle of Jutland .

In 1917 he was treated by Sir Harold Gillies , the first man to use skin grafts from undamaged areas of the body , also known as the " father of plastic surgery . " The London - based Gillies opened a specialist ward for the treatment of the facially wounded at Queen Mary Hospital in Sidcup , Kent . Walter Yeo was one of the first patients to benefit from its newly developed technique , a method of grafting skin called " tubed pedical . "

The young sailor from Plymouth , Devon was given new eyelids with a " mask " of skin grafted across his face and eyes