Jacques CALVÉ1875–1954

Jacques CALVÉ

1875–1954

In the years between the two world wars, when spectacular developments were taking place in orthopedic surgery in Great Britain, three conti- nental surgeons formed close ties of friendship with their British contemporaries—Mürk Jansen, Vittori Putti, and Jacques Calvé. All three looked to Sir Robert Jones as their leader, and con- tributed to the Birthday Volume (1928). With the passing of Jacques Calvé, another of the few remaining links with the great master is severed.

Calvé will long be remembered as one of the most distinguished exponents of French orthope- dics, and more especially for his illuminating con- tributions on the treatment of bone and joint tuberculosis. After resident hospital appointments in Paris, he became an assistant of the great pioneer Ménard, who for so many years directed the Maritime Hospital at Berck, and it fell to Calvé to present the principles and teaching of his master in modern perspective. This he did in a succession of articles and monographs. Many of these were written in collaboration with his col- league, Marcel Galland, whose mechanical inge- nuity in the devising of instruments and operative techniques was in striking contrast with Calvé’s essentially conservative approach to the long- term problems of tuberculosis disease of the spine and larger joints. After Ménard’s retirement, Calvé organized a new hospital—La Fondation Franco-Américaine de Berck. As the name sug- gests, this was launched with funds collected by American residents in France. Madame Calvé

herself was an American lady and the daughter of a regular officer in the United States Army.

Of Calvé’s contributions to orthopedic knowl- edge, a few stand out in bold relief—his inde- pendent description of pseudo-coxalgia (to be known later as Legg–Calvé–Perthes disease); his article on vertebral osteochondritis in the Robert Jones Birthday Volume; his pioneer attempts to relieve tension in Pott’s paraplegia by tapping the intraspinal abscess through an intervertebral foramen. In a letter to the writer of this memoir dated August 3, 1929, there can be found the following paragraph: “Je trouve que tons ces procédés de greffes extra-articulaires iléo- trochantériennes sont insuffisants et j’étudie maintenant, comme je vous l’ai dit, sin procédé qui me permettra de placer sin greffon inter- fémoro-sciatique. J’espère d’ici pen vous envoyer des documents intéressants à ce sujet.”

Calvé was a man of gracious bearing, tolerant, kindly, and a delightful host. After the liberation of France, he went to live in the United States of America, but returned to Berck in 1953 in failing health, to die in his old hospital.

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Who’s Who in Orthopedics

Willis Cohoon CAMPBELL

1880–1941

Willis Cohoon Campbell was born in Jackson,

Mississippi, on December 18, 1880. His early

education was received in his native state; his

college and premedical training were taken at

Hampden-Sydney College, Roanoke College; and his medical work at the University of Virginia, where he was graduated in 1904. After 2 years of internship, he entered the practice of medicine in Memphis. He early became interested in orthope- dic surgery, and, surmounting many hardships, he went to Europe to undertake the study of the spe- cialty. He studied in London and Vienna, and had further postgraduate study in New York and Boston with the celebrated orthopedic surgeons in this country at that time. He returned to Memphis in 1909 and resumed his practice, specializing in orthopedic surgery.

In 1910 he was asked to organize a Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Tennessee Medical School and he became the first professor of orthopedic surgery in this institution, which office he held with distinction until his death. His work in teaching was characterized by his desire to improve the teaching of orthopedic surgery and postgraduate training.

Dr. Campbell realized the need for properly organized and conducted institutions for the care of indigent cripples, and he was one of the first to establish a crippled children’s hospital school in that part of the South. After the establishment of the Crippled Children’s Hospital School, he devoted his energy to the formation of a similar type of institution to continue the work for crip- pled children after they had passed childhood. He cherished the hope that some day he would see the foundation of an institution for the care of adult orthopedic patients. With the cooperation of some of his close friends, this hope was realized in 1923 with the establishment of the Hospital for Crippled Adults.

In 1920 he built and opened the Willis C.

Campbell Clinic, an institution for the care of his private patients and for the postgraduate training of men desiring to specialize in orthopedic surgery. The fellowships in orthopedic surgery, which he started in connection with the Willis C.

Campbell Clinic in 1924, provided essentially the same training required by the American Board for the Certification of Specialists.

Dr. Campbell was an active member of all the societies in his specialty and many of the general surgical societies. Among the societies of which he was president are the following: Memphis and Shelby County Medical Society, 1921; Clinical Orthopedic Society, 1928; American Orthopedic Association, 1931; and Southeastern Surgical Congress, 1933. He was a member of the Board of Governors of the American College of Sur-

geons, 1936–1939, and of the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, 1939–

1940. His other professional affiliations included active and honorary membership in many American and foreign societies.

Dr. Campbell played an important role in the formation of the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery and devoted many hours of thought to the problems incident to it. He served as a member of the examining board and was president from 1937 to 1940. In conjunction with a number of his col- leagues, Dr. Campbell envisioned the necessity for an organization in which younger men might receive recognition and identification that would guide their development. It was for this purpose that the American Academy of Orthopedic Sur- geons was founded, and its existence is very largely due to Dr. Campbell, who was honored by being made its first president in 1933, and he lived to see the influence that this society, in conjunc- tion with the American Orthopedic Association, has exerted in welding the present standards of the specialty.

His capacity for work was almost superhuman, and his interests were widely distributed. He con- tributed many articles to scientific programs and to various medical journals, also chapters on orthopedic surgery in many leading textbooks of surgery. In addition to this, he published three volumes: (1) a monograph, Orthopedics of Child- hood, 1927; (2) a textbook, Orthopedic Surgery, 1930; and (3) his last publication, Operative Orthopedics, in 1939.

He was one of the pioneers in the development of arthroplasties. He had perhaps the greatest experience in his work on arthroplasty of the knee, and he contributed extensively by his expe- rience with the massive onlay bone graft. Among his original contributions to the specialty, perhaps the best known is his bone-block operation for paralytic drop-foot. He was a great believer in the careful analysis of end results and some of his most outstanding contributions to the advance- ment and development of orthopedic surgery were contained in the published results of his vast experience.

To enumerate Dr. Campbell’s scientific attain- ments would be to tell the story of only a small part of his full life. He extended kindly and loving guidance over all of the younger men with whom he came in contact; they were inspired by his honesty and integrity, by his unbounded zeal and enthusiasm, by the soundness of his judgment, and by the dominant will with which he overcame

Who’s Who in Orthopedics

obstacles. The words of one of his friends express his feeling for him: “To know him was to love him, for his magnetic charm, his sincerity, his strong sense of fairness, and his unfailing kind- ness and courtesy endeared him to all who came within his ken. Indeed, only a little with him, and one was convinced that here, indisputably, was greatness.”

Willis Cohoon Campbell died on May 4, 1941, in Chicago. He was survived by his wife, the former Elizabeth Yerger, whom he married in 1908.

Dr. Campbell’s work was his life and he gave his life to it.

Norman Leslie CAPENER

1898–1975

Norman Leslie Capener was born on May 4, 1898, in Hornsey, North London, the third of a family of six boys. All were musical, and all went first to the Temple Choir School and then to the City of London School. For financial reasons, Norman had to leave when 14 to work in a City office for nearly 2 years before becoming an assis- tant master at a preparatory school. Having passed the examination of the College of Precep- tors, he entered the Medical College of St.

Bartholomew’s Hospital. He joined the Inns of Court Officers’ Training Corps, and in September 1917 was commissioned in the Royal Marines.

Thence, being a medical student, he was trans- ferred to the navy in the rank of Surgeon Sub- lieutenant, RNVR. On a change of policy away from the employment of medical students in ships, he was sent back to Bart’s to complete his training. In 1921, while still a student, he married Miss Marion Clarke, the daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy. He qualified in 1922, proceeded FRCS in 1924, and, gaining the Luther Holden and Streetfield scholarships, served for several years as demonstrator of anatomy under Profes- sor Le Gros Clark, for whom he had a lifelong regard. Capener then became a chief assistant on the Surgical Professorial Unit under Professor Gask and Mr. (later Sir) Thomas Dunhill. When Dr. Hugh Cabot took temporary charge of the Unit, he invited Capener to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as Assistant Professor of Surgery, where he served from 1926 to 1931 and

Who’s Who in Orthopedics

Pieter CAMPER

1722–1789

Pieter Camper, Professor of Medicine in Amster- dam, published one of the remarkable books in orthopedic literature, Desertation on the Best Form of Shoe. It was translated immediately and repeatedly into several European languages and was considered worthy of reprint as late as 1861.

He was one of the outstanding medical scientists

of Europe in the eighteenth century and his

apology for discussing so lowly a subject as shoes

is amply discussed in his introduction. He inci-

dentally was also one of the superior anatomical

artists of his period and, like da Vinci, illustrated

his own publications.