Medicine: Grafting Problem

A British surgeon recently did a mastoid operation on a middle-aged man who had once been a sailor. He decided to graft some skin from elsewhere on the patient’s body to the site of the operation, behind his ear. When the surgeon viewed the patient’s body, he found it almost completely covered with tattooed images of naked women (one named Mary) and erotic designs. Last week in the Lancet, the surgeon, writing anonymously, told how he faced his problem:

“I was quite unable to decide whether tattooed skin could be grafted, and, if so, what would happen. Suppose I transferred some of Mary to the mastoid, would it have any influence on the man’s mentality? Would it send him seeking Mary in whatever far-distant corner of the earth he had encountered her? Suppose he subsequently developed tinnitus [ringing in the ears], would voices whisper ‘Mary’? Would the skinned portion of Mary be replaced with an undecorated regrowth. . . .? Would I be liable for damages in this event?”

The surgeon finally decided to take a number of small pieces of skin from between the lines of the tattooing, leaving the designs intact. In this way, he got enough for a satisfactory skin patch behind the ear.