Hippolyte Morestin

Hippolyte Morestin was a French surgeon and associate professor of anatomy at the University of Paris, remembered as one of the founders of cosmetic surgery. Born in 1869 at Basse-Pointe in Martinique, the son of a prominent doctor, he was sent to Paris as a boy and defended his doctoral thesis there in 1894. His breakthroughs in oral and maxillofacial surgery earned him the nickname The Father of the Mouths. The British-New Zealand surgeon Harold Gillies watched him during the First World War remove a facial tumor and close the wound with skin rolled from the patient's jaw, an experience that shaped Gillies. Morestin also trained Georges Duhamel, Thierry de Martel, Suzanne Noël, Léon Dufourmentel and Raymond Passot, published more than 600 scientific works, and died in 1919 during the influenza epidemic.