Alexander Burns Wallace

Alexander "Alister" Burns Wallace CBE FRSE FRCSE (1906–1974) was a Scottish plastic surgeon. He was a founding member and president (1951) of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, and the first editor of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery. In authorship he appears as A. B. Wallace.

1929 University of Edinburgh MB ChB graduation portrait of A.B. Wallace.

Life

He was born in Edinburgh in 1906, the son of Alexander Wallace and his wife, Christina Bishop.[1]

Wallace was educated at George Heriot's School and then studied Medicine at Edinburgh University, graduating with his MB ChB in 1929.[2]

He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1932. Following that, he went to McGill University completing a MSc degree in lymphatics research in 1936. During World War II he served as plastic surgeon at the Scottish Emergency Medical Hospital at Bangour (1940–45).

In 1945 he moved to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, and was Reader in Plastic Surgery at Edinburgh University from 1946 until his retirement in 1970.

In 1972 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Douglas Guthrie, Anthony Elliot Ritchie, Neil Campbell, and Sir Edmund Hirst.[1]

In 1973, he was awarded an honorary doctorate (PhD) by the University of St Andrews.

He retired to Ceres in Fife and died there on 14 December 1974, leaving a wife, son and three daughters.[2]

Wallace Rule of Nines

In 1951 Wallace introduced the "Rule of Nines" in an article published in the British medical journal "Lancet":

"For patients over the age of 16 years the 'Rule of Nines' (Wallace 1951) indicates the percentage of TBSA accounted for by various parts of the body. Nine per cent for the head and each arm, 18 per cent each for lower limbs and front and back of the trunk, and 1 per cent for the perineal region... Wallace AB (1951) The exposure treatment of burns. Lancet. 1, 501."

British Association of Plastic Surgeons (BAPS) Council at Roehampton, London, September 1952. From left: A H McIndoe, R Mowlem, J N Barron, R J V Battle, A B Wallace, J P Teidy, T P Kilner, J S Tough

Selected publications

Wallace, A.B. The Treatment of Burns. Lord Horder. Oxford University Press. 1941.

Wallace, A.B. "The History and Evolution of Plastic Surgery." Res Medica: Journal of the Royal Medical Society. 1965.

gollark: What do you do on boxing day? Boxing?
gollark: Santa is watching you eternally.
gollark: Merry Christmas with an 8 minute margin of error.
gollark: All cloud™ engineers have direct access to the cloud.
gollark: They aren't here right now.

References
  1. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0 902 198 84 X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
  2. https://www.jprasurg.com/article/S0007-1226(75)90185-X/pdf
  • Obituary: British Medical Journal 18 January 1975
  • The History of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, 1946 - 2005
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.