At the end of the Spanish–American War in July, 1898, he was sent to Cuba as representative of the Massachusetts Volunteer Aid Association.
His assignment was to receive supplies sent on hospital ships and to determine the needs of the men. His first concern was for the sick among our troops ready to be evacuated to the United States and he made provision for their care on transports.
Then, at the request of General Wood, he took charge of a hospital in Santiago and also organ- ized work for the care of the sick in the city, where serious epidemics had developed.
Answering the call of his country in World War I, he was largely responsible for the training of the orthopedic personnel and for the determina- tion of where they should be located after their preparation had been completed. He himself, eventually, was sent overseas, returning with the rank of Colonel.
At the invitation of the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, who learned that he contemplated a trip to China in 1922, he gave a series of lectures at the Peking Union Medical College and in one or two other medical centers.
maturity and originality. His study of club feet published 60 years ago might well be used today in an orthopedic instructional course. Besides his great technical contributions, particularly to the treatment of tuberculous coxitis and of congeni- tal hip disease, he introduced the “social point of view” into orthopedic surgery by helping found the Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children in Boston (1894), and established the principle of preventive medicine in orthopedic surgery by his campaign for correct shoes and adequate seating of school children. His amazing industry is attested by the publication between 1887 and 1902 of 105 original papers, a textbook, and numerous articles on orthopedic progress in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.
38 Who’s Who in Orthopedics
Louis W. BRECK
1909–1993
The son of a pioneer dentist, Louis Breck was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1909. He was educated in local schools and attended Northwestern Uni- versity, from which he received his medical degree in 1933. After his orthopedic training at the Mayo Clinic, he began his practice in El Paso.
During World War II, he served in the army as a medical officer, being discharged with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He returned to El Paso to continue his practice and remained active until his retirement in 1979.
To his patients and friends, Dr. Breck was a very special person. He had many innovative
Edward H. BRADFORD
1848–1926
Edward Bradford was one of the most vigorous of the “founding fathers,” the third president of the American Orthopedic Association (1889) and Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Harvard Medical School (1903). He had a mind of unusual
ideas, among which was a McBee card system, enabling him to keep track of the conditions that he was treating and to obtain long-term follow-up studies on his patients. Dr. Breck was active in his local community and in national and international orthopedic societies. He was a member of the closely knit group of friends who were founders of the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons, and he was actively involved in creating the journal of this organization, Clinical Orthopedics.
His early report of the results of the treatment of 47 patients with hip disease using a cementless system consisting of a Urist acetabular cup machined to fit precisely a hip prosthesis was important, because it demonstrated that the use of cement was not always necessary in total hip arthroplasty. The quality of his technique can be assessed by the fact that no case was complicated by infection.
He died in El Paso on 24 September 1993 and was barried in Evergreen Cemetery.
widening circle of friends in many different walks of life—was conspicuous for his athletic skill. He represented the hospital at lawn tennis, soccer, and water polo; and quickly became a scratch golfer.
He was an early motorist, and being provided with an ample allowance by a generous father, was able to indulge his hobby in a series of sporting cars.
Unobtrusively, and with an apparent absence of effort, he passed all his examinations in due sequence and obtained the Conjoint Diploma of the Royal Colleges in 1907. One year later he graduated as MB BS in the University of London, and within 2 more years had successfully negoti- ated the formidable hurdles of the primary and final examinations for the FRCS (Eng). His first resident appointment at St. Thomas’ was that of house surgeon to Sir George Makins; this was fol- lowed by a term as senior house surgeon on the emergency block. Bristow’s practical acquain- tance with many forms of athletics and sport excited interest in the treatment of injuries of the locomotor system and, more especially, in the neglected field of “sprains and strains.” By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, he was well established in consulting practice in London. He had already entered into military commitments as medical officer to the Middlesex Yeomanry and served with this unit in Gallipoli, being mentioned in dispatches for his conduct at the Suvla Bay landing.
He returned to England in 1916 to convalesce from an attack of the prevailing dysentery and by a happy conspiracy of events came under the notice of Sir Robert Jones, who was then engaged in forming the staff of the Military Orthopedic Centre at Shepherd’s Bush, London. Bristow’s primary appointment was to organize and take charge of the electro-therapeutic department, but he was soon added to the surgical staff, and then joined the small band of younger orthopedic sur- geons who were to become the devoted disciples of Robert Jones in the post-war years. At Shepherd’s Bush, Bristow devoted much time and patience to the study of peripheral nerve injuries, and he made full use of the wealth of clinical and operative material that came his way. This led to his appointment on the Committee on Peripheral Nerve Injuries set up by the Medical Research Council. Ostensibly he was selected as an expert in after-treatment, for it brought him into contact with the minds of such men as Henry Head and Wilfred Trotter. Although Bristow was the first to disclaim any status as an academic, it became evident that his mental processes were as 39
Who’s Who in Orthopedics
Walter Rowley BRISTOW
1882–1947
Walter Rowley Bristow was born at Bexley, Kent, on December 12, 1882. He received his early medical education at St. Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, where among his contemporaries and close friends were Charles Max Page, Gathorne R. Girdlestone, and Godfrey Martin Huggins (later Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia). During his undergraduate years,
“Rowley”—as he became known to an ever-
