Who’s Who in Orthopedics He was considered an international authority
on the biomechanics of total joint replacement, joint motion and forces associated with walking, and the evaluation of patients who had had total joint replacement. His contributions to the clini- cal and research aspects of hip disease were rec- ognized by his peers in the Hip Society who gave him the John Charnley Award for outstanding research in 1988.
In addition to his other honors, Dr. Stauffer was an American–British–Canadian Traveling Fellow in 1978. He remained very interested in interna- tional orthopedic affairs. He served on the board of the American Academy of Orthopedic Sur- geons and on its Committee on Research from 1981 to 1987. He also served as president of the Orthopedic Research Society and on the Execu- tive Committee of the American Orthopedic Association.
He served on the editorial boards of Archives of Surgery and the Journal of Arthroplasty, and he was editor-in-chief of the Atlas of Orthopedic Surgical Exposure and Advances in Operative Orthopedics. He also chaired an advisory panel to the United States Food and Drug Administration.
Dick was, first and foremost, a dedicated family man with a very close-knit family. He enjoyed nothing more than attending gatherings at the recently created family compound in Idaho, where he could do a little fishing with his sons.
His interests were varied; he was an excellent wood-carver and painter. He was interested in classic automobiles and had recently begun taking lessons in classical guitar. He was truly a multifaceted man. He weighed his words care- fully and made decisive decisions.
He died of pneumonia on February 27, 1998, at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 59 years old.
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Paul B. STEELE
1891–1973
On March 29, 1973, Pittsburgh lost one of its out- standing orthopedic surgeons of the twentieth century, Paul B. Steele, at the age of 81. Paul had long been one of the leaders of the specialty, and at the retirement of Dr. David Silver in 1946 he became professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh and chief of the orthope- dic service at the Allegheny General Hospital.
Paul was born in Crenshaw, Pennsylvania, on September 4, 1891. His early education was in the Crenshaw schools. He went straight to medical college from the Dykeman Preparatory School. In 1915 he took his MD degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore, which 1 year earlier had been taken over by the Univer- sity of Maryland. He interned from 1915 to 1916 at the Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and then became the assistant of Dr. David Silver, with whom he was closely associated for over 30 years. A few months after World War I started, he enlisted, and was immediately sent overseas with the Second Orthopedic Unit headed by Dr. Joel E.
Goldthwait, of Boston. The unit landed in
England on October 17, 1917. Paul was ordered
to the Edinburgh War Hospital for training in war
surgery, and served under the great Sir Harold
Stiles until June 1918, when he joined the
American Army in France. Toward the end of
June he arrived at Neufchâteau, where be became
one of a surgical team that included Dr. Elliot
Cutler and Dr. Carleton Metcalf. This team joined
the Evacuation Hospital No. 7 at Château Thierry,
where they remained through one of the bloodi- est battles of the war. The team then became attached to Mobile Hospitals No. 1 and No. 2.
After the war ended, he served at a number of bases: Châteauroux, Brest, Perigoux, Bordeaux, and Beau Désert. When he returned home in July 1919, he worked first at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington and then at Ford McPherson in Atlanta, where he was in charge of the amputa- tion section. In recognition of his outstanding war record, he was awarded the Army Silver Star.
After his discharge on October 9, 1919, he returned to his former position with Dr. Silver in Pittsburgh. He was a member of the staff of the Allegheny General Hospital for over 50 years.
When he retired he was given emeritus status at both the medical school, where he had taught for 47 years, and at the Allegheny General Hospital.
One of Paul’s most significant contributions was to help Dr. Silver in the organization and operation of the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children at Leetsdale, outside Pittsburgh. This was opened in 1919 and soon became one of the outstanding crippled children’s hospitals in the country. Paul was very active in the state crippled children’s services and at different times held as many as 16 clinics; some of these started many years before the state program for crippled chil- dren was established. He was on the staffs of eight hospitals in Pittsburgh and at the Shriner’s Hos- pital in Erie, Pennsylvania, in addition to the D.T.
Watson Home.
Paul was vice president of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons in 1941, having been a founding member in 1934. He was also the first president of the Pittsburgh Orthope- dic Society, president of the Pittsburgh Academy of Medicine, and a member of the American Orthopedic Association (1941), the Société Inter- nationale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et de Traumatologie (SICOT) (1948), the American College of Surgeons, and the Latin American Society of Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology.
Paul had a great love for surgery and was always considered an excellent technician. He was best known for two operations: one, a barrel- stave graft for ununited fractures and bone cysts (1927); and the other, removal of the destroyed bone in the femoral head in coxa plana and packing of the cavity with bone chips (1928). The latter operation he performed for many years before it was reported in the literature. In his hands the results seemed to be better than those reported by others. This procedure was very
popular for a while but was then given up. His many other original operations included: (1) an operation for detorsion and derotation in scolio- sis (1926); (2) a procedure to reconstruct the car- tilaginous head in an ununited fracture of the femoral neck (1929); (3) a graft between the first and second cervical vertebrae for ununited frac- tures of the odontoid process (1928); (4) a rota- tion operation for ununited fractures of the carpal scaphoid (1934); (5) an operation for congenital dislocation of the patella (1930); and (6) wiring for fractures of the patella without entering the joint (1938). Unfortunately, Paul left few publi- cations and also very few end-result studies. In a document he prepared after his retirement, he listed his many original operations and stated that all of the ununited scaphoids he operated on had united and that his operation for congenital dislo- cation of the patella had never failed. He also had his own procedures for treating subacromial bur- sitis by aspiration with a large needle, for ulnar- nerve suture, and for acute suppurative arthritis and gonorrheal arthritis. He wrote the chapter on
“Fractures of the Pelvis, Sacrum and Coccyx” in Bancroft and Murray’s Surgical Treatment of the Motor-Skeletal System (1945).
Paul was a good, clear speaker and a good teacher. He was an excellent golfer, an avid hunter and fisherman, and a good marksman. He was a delightful story teller and had a host of stories, which included many of his personal experiences.
In 1923, Paul married Anne Laurel McNeill, who had been an army nurse in World War I, serving at one time in Evacuation Hospital No. 17 in Vladivostok, Russia. They were devoted part- ners and had two sons, Paul Jr. and David, and six grandchildren. Both Paul and David became orthopedic surgeons, and were associated with their father in practice before he retired to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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