During the Great War of 1914 to 1918, spectacular progress was made in the field of facial reconstruction. The sheer number and severity of facial lesions inflicted during the fighting obliged French and German surgeons to take a close interest in the treatment of patients wounded in such a manner. As head surgeon of the fifth division "blessés de la face" at the hospital of Val-de-Grace, Hippolyte Morestin was responsible for one of the largest surgical departments specializing in facial surgery and reconstruction during the war. During his time of service, he developed various surgical techniques such as autoplasties using cartilaginous and adipose grafts to reconstruct tissue defects. This study focuses primarily on the adipose graft techniques and their aesthetic outcome used by Morestin during and in the aftermath of World War I.

A significant number of earlier (1929-1987) and more recent (1991-2009) history of psychology textbooks have reported on the 1917 founding of the Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP). Although only G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) was mentioned as the founder, the JAP had three financial founders: Hall, John Wallace Baird (1869-1919), and Ludwig Reinhold Geissler (1879-1932). They also served as co-editors for Volumes 1 and 2, and Hall and Geissler continued as co-editors for Volumes 3 and 4. Geissler's contributions to Volumes 1-4 far exceeded Hall's and Baird's. In unpublished autobiographical notes written in 1920, Geissler described himself as having "founded" and "established" the JAP with Hall's and Baird's aid; the evidence is consistent with that claim.

The healing potential of fat grafting was empirically noted by the surgeons who were confronted with the dramatic facial disfigurements resulting from World War 1. Fat was transplanted into the wounds either en bloc or in parcels to promote the healing capacity or to correct the uneven, depressed scars from gunshot wounds, enabling the poor soldiers to step back to society and families in a shorter period of time.The idea of transplanting fat into the wound of the facially disfigured started with Hippolyte Morestin (1869-1919), surgeon in chief at Val-de Grace Military Hospital in Paris and was widely adopted by HD Gillies (1882-1960), Erich Lexer (1867-1937), Gustavo Sanvenero Rosselli (1897-1974), and others, achieving amazing results. Successful treatment of facially injured individuals showed the importance of plastic surgical procedures, the social role of the discipline, basis for obtaining the official recognition as surgical specialty.

William Barnett Warrington (1869-1919) was a physician and physiologist working in Liverpool, United Kingdom, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. His training included periods at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, Queen Square, London, and in the Liverpool laboratory of Charles Scott Sherrington. He investigated structural alterations in nerve cells following various nerve lesions and helped to develop laboratory facilities to support clinical practice through the Pathological Diagnosis Society of Liverpool. His clinical interests were broad, but his main focus seems to have been in disorders of the peripheral nervous system. He published many papers, encompassing descriptions of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, brachial plexus paralyses (possibly including neuralgic amyotrophy), and, in the context of the First World War, traumatic peripheral nerve injuries. He may have described cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome prior to the eponymous description but despite being familiar with the technique of lumbar puncture, he did not report cerebrospinal fluid findings in these patients.