The evolution of plastic and maxillofacial surgery in the twentieth century: the Dunedin connection.

At the outbreak of the Second World War there were four full-time plastic surgeons in the United Kingdom: Gillies, Kilner, McIndoe and Mowlem, known universally as the 'big four.' Three were from New Zealand, two had been born in Dunedin (Harold Gillies and Archibald McIndoe) and two (McIndoe and Rainsford Mowlem) had studied medicine in Dunedin at the University of Otago. The story of Gillies and McIndoe is well known to many. Perhaps less well known are the contributions of Mowlem and Henry Pickerill, another surgeon with Dunedin connections, and how the futures of these men were shaped by a small 19th century Scottish settlement at the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand.