Davies Dermatomes
Medical Equipments in Cape Town

Davies® Gold Series Dermatomes are surgical instruments for harvesting of skin, for grafting.They are capable of producing grafts of between 0.08 and 0.38mm in seven thicknesses.

His long and adventurous life started in the small mining village of Abertillery, Wales. He entered as a private and in July 1918 he had achieved the rank of major and was discharged to resume his medical studies, At Oxford he was awarded the Theodore Williams Prize in Pathology’ in 1921, and the next year he was admitted to Guy’s Hospital and was awarded the Beaney Prize in Pathology in A promising career in surgery opened with his appointment as House Surgeon to Sir Alfred Fripp, but, restless after his war experiences, he joined the Sudan Medical Service and was given a small river boat and an area the size of England to administer. There was a rebellion in the Sudan at this time and at one stage he had to walk alone through the Arab quarter of Khartoum with only a Red Cross on his arm to protect him, He returned to England on leave and married Agnes Anne Anderson, a staff nurse at Guy’s Hospital. In 1927 their first child, a son, was born in London. Dr Davies was then considering a career in genito-urinary surgery and was Clinical Assistant at St Paul’s Hospital in London. Itchy feet led him to accept the position of surgeon to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in Abadan in the Persian Gulf and there his family was completed by the addition of twins. In 1931 he became physician to the British Embassy in Teheran and he gradually became responsible for the health of most of the expatriate community (including the Russians) in Teheran for the next 15 years. A busy life was enlivened with trout fishing in the Valley of the Assassins, boar hunting in the Elburz Mountains and bird expeditions to the Caspian marshes with Peter Scott. He was a keen fly fisherman all his life and took great pleasure in later life catching trout in most of the streams and dams in the Cape Peninsula and surrounding countryside. He was also admitted as a member to the Order of Science by the Shah of Persia. His family had been sent to Cape Town during the war for further education, and in 1945 he joined them. As a surgeon he had always shown an interest in plastic and reconstructive surgery and in 1946 he and the late Dr Norman Petersen started the Plastic and Maxillofacial Unit at Groote Schuur Hospital. This unit evolved into what was perhaps the premier teaching unit in South Africa in this field. In 1956 he helped to found the Association of Plastic Surgeons of Southern Africa and in 1960 he was elected President of this Society. Later, after his retirement, he was presented with a rare citation award from the Association of Plastic Surgeons. Dr Davies retired from a busy private and hospital practice in 1960 and lived happily with Agnes Anne, his wife, for many years in Newlands, next door to his daughter who cared for him in his declining years. He is survived by two sons and a daughter, eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. He was the epitome of a gentleman, always kind and considerate to staff and patients and always prepared to help anyone interested in plastic surgery. He set a fine example for the first wave of young plastic surgeons passing through the Unit and will be remembered with affection by all of them. He was undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of plastic surgery.