麻豆社

Use 麻豆社.com or the new 麻豆社 App to listen to 麻豆社 podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Episode details

Radio Leicester,11 mins

The Guinea Pig Club

Jonathan Lampon

Available for over a year

The Guinea Pig Club sounds like something your children or grandchildren might be a member of. But the name has more depth to it than that. It was established in 1941 during the second world war. Its membership was made up of patients, primarily fighter pilots in the RAF, who were being treated for horrendous burns when their planes came down in action. The men were looked after at a hospital in Sussex. The head surgeon of that hospital was Archibald McIndoe. It was his pioneering plastic surgery treatments which were used to operate on the scarred and burned faces of pilots. Very little was known about plastic surgery during the war and so the men who he treated became known as guinea pigs. Sandy Saunders is from Burton Lazars. He's one of only a handful of surviving guinea pigs. He was treated by McIndoe after his glider crashed when on operations with the army. And he wants to pay tribute to his former colleagues and McIndoe with a special memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

Programme Website
More episodes