Inside Vancouver
Skin Deep
By Katherine Ashenburg published Jun 1, 2009
When local doctors Jean and Alastair Carruthers discovered the cosmetic properties of the toxin she’d been using to treat her ophthalmological patients, they changed the face of beauty
Dr. Alastair Carruthers, named by the Observer as one of the “50 men who really understand women,” is sitting in a room papered with his diplomas, certificates, and publications. He calls it—wryly—the Credibility Room, and credibility is important to him. He explains that he’s had his vertical frown lines removed so as not to look threatening, but the horizontal lines in his forehead are okay for a man, as they suggest curiosity and involvement. Maybe there’s something to this; he certainly looks trustworthy when he says, “There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.” The genie is Botox, whose wrinkle-busting talents he and his wife, Jean, discovered in 1987. Since then, it’s become a billion-dollar industry, North America’s number one cosmetic procedure, and the inspiration behind a crowded new generation of fillers, intense pulsed light and radio-frequency therapies, and other age-fighting products. This husband-and-wife team, you could argue, has played a major role in reshaping our notion of beauty.
Given all that, one might expect the Carruthers’ Broadway offices to be rather grand, with wide hallways and, perhaps, lashings of granite. They are far from that. They’re located in a stocky, no-nonsense 1970s building between Oak and Laurel. Jean’s, on the seventh floor, is a feminine warren of small rooms, with creamy brocade wing chairs and a framed thank-you note from the Queen in the waiting room. (The Carruthers guard their patients’ confidentiality religiously, and the note refers to congratulations sent on her 80th birthday.) Alastair’s eighth-floor suite is roomier and more masculine, with grey and brown chairs that would suit a boardroom, and a framed note from Katharine Hepburn. (He met her when Jean treated her for an ophthalmological condition and she wrote Jean, “Very handsome husband!”) Everything is immaculate and comfortable, but designed to be reassuring rather than impressive.
Somehow that fits with the whole Botox founding legend, which is low-key, even familial. In 1987, Alastair was a dermatologist who divided his practice between surgery for skin cancer and cosmetic dermatology. He shared his office with Jean, an ophthalmologist who treated pediatric disorders as well as adult conditions such as blepharospasm. An uncontrollable blinking and spasming of the eye and surrounding area, blepharospasm was treated with injections of a dilute solution of botulinum toxin, which temporarily paralyzes the relevant muscles. (Although botulinum, the source of botulism, is the most acutely toxic substance known, its ophthalmological use, in minute quantities, had been established several years before.) One day, in Jean’s account, one of her blepharospasm patients became irate that her forehead was not being injected. But your forehead isn’t spasming, Jean responded, and asked why she cared. Because when you inject my forehead, the patient said, my wrinkles go away.
