Because of computerization, automation, and better efficiencies in workflow.

Advances in weaponry meant that, for the first time, men were coming home from war with literally half their faces blown off, on a regular basis. This was not only traumatic— there were cases of men cancelling engagements or being afraid to see their families, because of their disfigurements— but also caused problems with every day tasks like speaking and eating, in which your face plays a pretty key role.

Gillies arranged for a whole ward, and later a hospital, to be dedicated to the treatment of these men, and took steps to ensure that all soldiers who received these kinds of injuries on the battlefield would be sent to him directly. He developed methods for applying skin grafts so that larger portions of the face could be repaired.

He continued his work treating wounded soldiers throughout WW1 and WW2, and when both wars were ended— just in case he hadn't done enough to establish himself as a full on hero— he was then approached by a medical student named Michael Dillon, a trans man, and was able to use the same techniques he'd developed to reconstruct the penises of wounded soldiers to give him a phalloplasty. The first one ever performed on a trans man. He even diagnosed the guy with a condition to explain the frequent operations, so as to avoid outing him.

Dillon later wrote a book about trans-ness, which inspired Roberta Cowell, who became the first British transwoman to get a vaginoplasty, also performed by Gillies.

Once I had someone do the whole "that seems so hard, you must be so patient" standard routine. I ask her, "why's that?" You know, why do I need to be some kind of virtuous martyr to watch 90s cartoons with other disabled people for $30 an hour?

And she says to me, with full seriousness and a look of utter dread on her face,

"All the biting."

OK mate. What do you mean. What biting. What are you on about.

"The biting," she repeats, as if it's obvious and I ought to intuitively know what she means. Then she kind of snaps her teeth to demonstrate. "You know?"

No I don't know. What do you mean biting.

"They bite," she says. Eyes wide, dead serious. "The, um, the Slow People. They bite."