<Begin Segment 59>

HS: Secondly, by '72, '73, I had become the secretary of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons, and by '78 I was the president of the, of the society. And that was a milestone, becoming president. And as, from there --

TI: Milestone meaning, a personal milestone.

HS: Yeah, personal milestone, as a medical person. And during that whole period, we had some firsts in Alberta in that we had the first residency program going west of Toronto, secondly we had the first burn unit. We set up a burn unit at the university hospital in the late '60s. And so we had a burn unit that could treat burns on a consistent basis and with, with good success. People survived despite horrendous burns. And not only that, we, by 1980s, by this time, cosmetic surgery was coming along, and we were probably the first ones to really do the, the liposuction. 'Cause we went, I came down to, to Los Angeles, and we went to a course that was put on by, in, at the American group, brought this guy who had developed the technique of liposuction in Paris, guy by the name of Gerard Illouz, and he gave this course in, at the Beverly Hilton. So I went there to learn to do it, and then brought it back to Edmonton. There was a guy there from Peterborough , Ontario. His disadvantage was when he went back, of course, he wasn't going back to, he wasn't going back to Ontario, he was now at, relocated to, to Texas. But I knew him and we were there in the class, and we watched Gerard Illouz do this, and he's using his suction, and of course using French words like allon, commonce, and this guy, Peter says to me, he says, "Gee, Henry, I don't think we can do this operation." I said, "Why not?" He says, "You have to learn a foreign language." [Laughs] Which, it was just a joke. But anyhow, we did, we brought, I was able at that time, I arranged to get this Gerard Illouz to come to Edmonton. Well, eventually I got a letter from him saying that... by this time, everybody was clamoring for him, of course, and New York wanted him. And here's Edmonton, I already had my bids in before, but between going to New York, San Francisco, all the big universities in the United States, he said, "Well," he says, "I'm sorry but I can't come to Edmonton." So he said, "But however, I'll send you one of the, my disciples, who's done this work in Las Vegas, guy by the name of Hetter." And it turned out that Hetter was probably a better choice, because when he came to Edmonton to teach us about liposuction, our little conference put together, he was much more prepared than Gerard Illouz, who was good technically, but difficult to understand in how you do, what the whole process was. Well, Hetter was a student of fat and how to get rid of it and all that sort of thing. So it turned out that he was a very good lecturer and we really got that going. So liposuction started in the early '80s in Edmonton, probably the earliest area in Canada of any degree.

TI: That's another good story.

<End Segment 59> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.