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Case of an unexploded cannon shell lodged in the face of a WW2 patient. The shell was discovered after an X-ray of the head was taken, and was removed by Professor Thomas Gibson, a former president of the RCPSG.

Portrait of Thomas Gibson, seated wearing ceremonial robes.

Tom Gibson graduated from the University of Glasgow MBChB in 1938. He worked as an assistant surgeon to the Medical Research Council as part of their work in the Burns Wards of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. from 1942 to 1944. He served as a surgeon specialising in maxillofacial surgery with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War. After this he worked as Consultant Plastic Surgeon to the West of Scotland Plastic and Oral Surgery Service, becoming Director in 1970 until his retirement in 1980.

Gibson was president of the College from 1976 to 1978.

c. 1946

This unexploded cannon shell was extracted from the face of a patient by Professor Tom Gibson, a former president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. The shell struck the soldier in the face, but caused little clinical disturbance.

Tom Gibson was born in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, on 24 November 1915. He was educated at Paisley Grammar School and Glasgow University where he graduated MB, ChB in 1938. He worked in the Medical Research Council Burns Unit, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, 1942-4. While at the Burns Unit he made an outstanding contribution to the understanding of the mechanism of homograft rejection. He was joined in Glasgow by Peter Medawar who had been working in Oxford on the same problem and their joint work “The fate of skin homografts in man”, was published in the Journal of Anatomy in 1943. The article is quoted in Morton’s Medical Bibliography as the work which placed the laws of transplantation on a firm scientific basis.

Pictured here is a cannon shell, which was extracted from a patient's face during the Second World War. It was removed by Professor Thomas Gibson, former President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and Captain of a Royal Army Medical Corp maxillofacial surgery team during WW2. This cannon shell is 8.5 cm in length, 2cm in diameter and weighs 147.3g.