Worcester Business Journal

W o r c e s t e r 3 0 0 : C i t y o f I n n o v a t o r s 27 1822-1921 I t was in a tented hospital complex in Carmiers, France, that Dr. Varaztad Kazanjian fulfilled a calling in response to a tremendous need. He had arrived in Worcester from the Ottoman Empire in 1895 as a teenager to escape oppression and discrimination in Turkish Armenia. Worcester already had a community of Armenian immigrants who constituted a key part of the manufacturing labor force. He took a job at Washburn & Moen and became a naturalized citizen in 1900. He applied to the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in 1902, graduating in 1905 with a DMD degree. By the time World War I broke out, Kazanjian had established both a successful dental practice and a marriage. He took particular interest in treating damaged jaws, whether by trauma or cancer. In 1915, he volunteered to join the Harvard Medical Corps, posted to the hospital tent in Carmiers, France, to serve injured British forces. Post- Civil War advances in treatment of infections and the administration of anesthesia, meant more of them lived – but at a cost of horrific facial injuries of jaws, noses, cheeks, and skulls destroyed by ordnance. Kazanjian worked under adverse conditions, but he combined compassion with groundbreaking medical procedures. He Pioneering plastic surgeon established a maxillofacial clinic that would treat more than 3,ooo soldiers over four years, establishing his later reputation as a founder of the modern practice of plastic surgery. He was promoted to the rank of major in June 1916. Aer the war, he served as professor of clinical oral surgery at Harvard Medical School from 1922 to 1941, at which point he was named Harvard's first professor of plastic surgery. He also co-authored the first edition of "e Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries" with Dr. John Marquis Converse. Among many honoraria and awards he received were leading posts at the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgery, and the New England Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. While Kazanjian's diminutive stature and Armenian accent marked him at first as an outsider in the medical profession's social culture of the time, his patients held him in highest regard. ey would come to include Sigmund Freud, for whom, in 1931, he designed an upper-jaw prosthesis, as Freud had developed oral cancer. e next year, Kazanjian would reconstruct the face of Francis Hawks, a then- popular pilot, who had been seriously injured in a plane crash in Worcester, where he had appeared to speak at an event. Victims of crashes, burns, and other accidents now benefit from Kazanjian's pioneering efforts in facial reconstruction technology that was once considered impossible. — Christina P. O'Neill Dr. Kazanjian started by fixing faces of World War I soldiers Kanjian worked under adverse conditions, but combined compassion with groundbreaking medical procedures. He established a millofacial clinic that would treat more than 3,000 soldiers over four years. A 2007 biography of Dr. Kazanjian chronicles how he transformed dentistry to rebuild lives. Image | Image | Christina P. O'Neill

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