Who’s Who in Orthopedics
George Frederic STILL
1868–1941
George Frederic Still was born in a working-class suburb of London, of Cornish stock. He was edu- cated at Cambridge, where he took a first in the classics. After his medical training at Guy’s Hospital, he became a house physician at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street.
He remained on the staff of this hospital for over 30 years. Still was the first physician in England Harvard Medical Schools. The traction theory was explained in the section that Codman entitled
“Dr. Stevens’ Theory of Mechanism of Produc- tion of Brachial Plexus Injuries.” Although cases of brachial plexus injury due to traction had been reported by Flaubert (1827) and Malgaigne (1847) and the traction theory of injury had been advanced by Gerdy and Horsely, Stevens was the first to analyze carefully the mechanical vectors created by the anatomy and to estimate the actual forces involved.
References
1. Codman EA (1934) The Shoulder. Boston (privately printed)
2. Stevens JH (1924) Compression leverage fractures of the ankle joint. Surg Gynecol Obstet 38:234 3. Stevens JH (1926) Dislocation of the shoulder. Ann
Surg 83:84
322
Fritz STEINMANN
1872–1932
Fritz Steinmann of Bern, Switzerland, described a new method for the reduction and the treatment of fractures by the use of a specially designed nail to be inserted through a distal fragment and to be controlled by direct skeletal traction. This was published in 1907 when the fear of introducing infection into bone was a matter of nightmare concern to all surgeons. Its rapid acceptance in spite of the fears the method engendered is a tribute to that decade of surgeons. The Steinmann pin was one of the half dozen important contri- butions to fracture therapy in over 2,000 years of its practice.
James H. STEVENS
1871–1932
James H. Stevens was raised in Rochester, New Hampshire and graduated from Dartmouth College. He attended the New York Homeopathic Medical College, from which he received his medical degree in 1893. Like many idealistic young physicians, he sought adventure and the opportunity to make a political statement. He did this by serving 3 years (1895–1898) on the staff of General Maximo Gomez y Baez (El Chino), one of the leaders of the revolution against the Spanish rule in Cuba. After returning from Cuba, Stevens practiced surgery in and around Boston until his death from coronary thrombosis. From what little I can glean, he must have been a tal- ented eccentric whose ideas were somewhat out of the mainstream of medical practice. His published papers on fractures of the ankle2 and dislocation of the shoulder3 lean toward a mechanical explanation of the phenomena observed.
It was a surprise to find an important contribu- tion on brachial plexus injuries hidden in Ernest A. Codman’s book, The Shoulder.1 Chapter XI, entitled “Brachial Plexus Injuries,” occupies pages 332–381 and is accompanied by an exten- sive bibliography of the literature on the subject.
Stevens prepared the initial manuscript on the basis of more than 100 dissections of the brachial plexus, which he carried out at Tufts and the
