Viewpoint. 1977-07-18, [Dame Cecily Pickerill].

Dame Cecily Pickerill, one of New Zealand's early plastic surgeons, is interviewed about her childhood, education and work with her husband, plastic surgery pioneer Professor Henry Percy Pickerill.

She attended Diocesan School for Girls in Auckland and decided she wanted to go on to train in medicine.
When she got to Otago University Medical School she says she found her first year a 'nightmare' as she had never studied chemistry or physics before.
After qualifying she worked at Dunedin Hospital, where she says she was worked terribly hard, for relatively little pay. As a house surgeon in the mid-1920s, she was allotted the plastic surgery 'run', where she met Henry Pickerill, who was still working on men disfigured in World War I.

They worked in Australia and then after they were married also worked on children. In 1939 they set up Bassam Hospital in Lower Hutt, specialising in treating children who needed plastic surgery.

She talks about the reasons why they had mothers rooming-in with their children, which reduced infection. Also their work with cleft palates and other birth defects and still receiving mail from former patients.