World
War I led Armenian American oral surgeon Dr. Varaztad Kazanjian to be
regarded as the founder of the modern practice of plastic surgery.
Kazanjian
was born in Erzinga (Western Armenia) on March 18, 1879. He attended a
French Jesuit school in Sepastia (Sivas), and then he moved to Samsun,
on the Black Sea shore, to live with his older half-brother. In October
1895, at the age of sixteen, he arrived in the United States as an
escapee of the Armenian massacres ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He
settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, and took a job at the local wire
factory, where he first displayed the dexterity that would serve him so
well in the future.
The
future surgeon decided to pursue a career in dentistry at the
suggestion of a coworker. He continued working during the day, spending
his nights taking classes and learning English. He entered the Harvard
Dental School in 1902, receiving his D.M.D. degree three years later.
Kazanjian
began a private practice upon his graduation, and also accepted a
position as an Assistant in Prosthetic Dentistry at his alma mater.
While working at the Harvard Dental School Clinic, he treated over four
hundred jaw fractures and introduced a new method of treatment. He was
one of the first to replace the inter-dental splint with a simpler
inter-maxillary wiring method.
He
was married and successfully running his own dental practice in 1914,
but when the First World War broke out, he volunteered to join the
Harvard Medical Corps, and posted to a huge tented hospital complex in
Camiers, France, where he served British forces. There Kazanjian began
to treat some of the worst injuries suffered in trench warfare: jaws,
noses, cheeks, and skulls shattered by bullets and grenades.
After
treating more than 3,000 such cases, and reconstructing many disfigured
faces, he was celebrated as the “Miracle Man of the Western Front.”
Working under primitive conditions in makeshift hospitals, the surgeon’s
humane concern, combined with innovative medical procedures,
established his reputation and marked his career as a founder of the
modern practice of plastic surgery. He was subsequently promoted to the
rank of major in June 1916.
For
his efforts, British King George V invested Kazanjian as a Companion of
the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1919. In the same year, he
returned to Boston and accepted a position as Professor of Military Oral
Surgery in Harvard Dental School. He completed his medical studies in
1921, when he graduated from Harvard Medical School, and became head of
the combined Plastic Surgery Clinic of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear
Infirmary and Massachusetts General Hospital. He also served on the
staffs of several hospitals. In 1922 he became Professor of Clinical
Oral Surgery at Harvard Medical School, a position he held until 1941,
when he became the first Professor of Plastic Surgery at the same
educational institution.
Varaztad
Kazanjian’s groundbreaking use of medical technology in eliminating
facial deformities and reconstructing faces after injuries was widely
lauded during his lifetime. His pioneering contributions transformed
plastic surgery into an esteemed surgical specialty. He recorded his
unique treatments and methods in one hundred and fifty journal articles,
and co-authored the classic
The Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries
(1949) with John M. Converse.
During
the 1950s, Kazanjian received many honors and awards from the American
Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the American Society of
Oral Surgeons, and the American Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1959.
Besides being a Fellow of a string of scientific organizations in the
United States and Great Britain, he served as president of the American
Association of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society of Maxillofacial
Surgery, and the New England Society of Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery. He died on October 19, 1974 at the age of 95. Armenian American
actress and radio and TV personality Arlene Francis (Kazanjian) was his
niece.
