Who’s Who in Orthopedics instruments with a scientific background. Parallel
to this, H. Willenegger contacted R. Schenk, at that time professor at the Institute of Anatomy in Basel, who contributed histological knowledge to their experimental work in bone healing. The animal experiments that led to their basic publi- cations were carried out in the basement of the hospital in Liestal. Osteotomies of the ulnae of dogs were bridged by compression plate osteosynthesis. This then enabled them to demon- strate direct bone healing based on bone remod- eling, starting from the adjacent Haversian systems under stable conditions. Later experi- ments confirmed osseous healing of hypertrophic pseudarthroses by stabilization using only a com- pression plate and without bone grafting.
Soon H. Willenegger realized that by perform- ing an osteosynthesis in a suboptimal way, cata- strophic complications could be created. Being willing to help such patients, Liestal became a center for the treatment of post-traumatic osteomyelitis, pseudarthrosis and malunion.
Because of this experience, H. Willenegger initi- ated the worldwide teaching of the AO principles, becoming the first president of AO International in 1972. This event marked the starting point for many years of global traveling, teaching AO in all five continents. He differentiated several teaching activities: (1) direct teaching, (2) teaching for teachers, enabling future teachers to continue their work of training locally, and (3) selecting adequate people to profit from an AO fellowship for 1–4 months in an established and recognized AO center, tailored to the needs of the fellow.
Countless are the slides that he gave to future AO teachers, carefully and paternally explaining the basic principles underlying each one. B.G. Weber in St. Gallen was supported in his interest in malleolar fractures, and C. Burri in Ulm encour- aged in his work on post-traumatic infections.
Many others, including the writer of this article, were carefully motivated to work on one of the many problems in traumatology that persisted at that time. As a devoted teacher, he was willing to open new possibilities of development to the recipient of his message, without claiming any rights as an initiator.
Shortly before Christmas in 1998, Hans Willenegger passed away, after months of pro- gressive illness, during which time he was lovingly cared for by his wife and family.
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Philip Duncan WILSON
1886–1969
Philip Wilson was born in Columbus, Ohio, on April 3, 1886, the son of Dr. Edward Wilson, a much respected family physician who also held the chair of obstetrics in the Starling Medical School of that city. After a high-school education, Philip entered Harvard College in 1904 and grad- uated with the degree of AB in 1909. From the College, where he enjoyed those carefree under- graduate years in the first decade of the twentieth century, he moved naturally to the Harvard Medical School. Here he began to show his con- siderable talents, and as president of his class he graduated MD cum laude in 1912. With such qualifications he was a strong candidate for a surgical internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a post he held for 2 years.
At that time the residency system had yet to come to Massachusetts General Hospital, although with the arrival of Harvey Cushing in Boston in 1912, this pattern of higher surgical training had been established at the new Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. After leaving the Massa- chusetts General Hospital, Philip returned to Columbus ready to embark on surgical practice.
But with the outbreak of World War I, things began to happen in Boston, and it was not long before he was invited to join the Harvard Unit, then assembling under Harvey Cushing.
The story of the creation of that unit and of its
early experiences in France in 1915 at Neuilly,
where it was housed in the Lycée Pasteur, is
vividly recounted in Harvey Cushing’s A
Surgeon’s Journal. The story is also told in chap-
ters of the unpublished wartime diary of Robert B. Osgood, who was the senior orthopedic surgeon of the group. Among the members of the unit who, with Philip Wilson, were to make sur- gical history in the years to follow, were Fred Caller (Philip’s class mate), Elliot Cutler, and Marius Smith-Petersen.
The months in Neuilly at the American Ambu- lance were to be a turning point for Philip Wilson;
perhaps the one influence above all others that shaped his life. For working at the hospital was a Red Cross nursing aide, Miss Germaine Parfouru- Porel. It did not take long for Philip and Germaine to decide they had been made for each other. At the end of a 3-month tour of duty with the unit, Philip returned to the United States, but was back at Neuilly for a second spell in 1916. On July 6, 1916, Philip and Germaine were married. To this marriage, which was to last for nearly 53 years, Germaine Wilson brought remarkable gifts. As the daughter of Madame Réjane, the great French actress, in her mother’s entourage she had enjoyed meeting important personages in many European countries. She had traveled widely, was bilingual, having been educated by English gov- ernesses, and was deeply interested in the theater, in music, and in literature. In Philip Wilson, Germaine Porel found a life partner highly responsive to such an ambiance, which was later to be reflected in their three gifted children—Paul Wilson, now a television producer; Philip D.
Wilson Jr., who has achieved distinction as an orthopedic surgeon entirely on his own merits;
and Marianne Finckel, now a member of the Faculty of Music at Bennington College.
Philip and Germaine Wilson crossed the Atlantic for a brief spell, but were soon back in France, with Philip now a major in the United States Army Medical Corps. In this capacity he served from July 1917 to August 1919, latterly as consultant in charge of amputations to the whole of the American Expeditionary Force. On demo- bilization, the Wilsons, with their son Paul, born in Paris, found themselves back in Columbus, Ohio. But Philip was now one of the coming young men, and later in 1919 he returned to Boston to join the group headed by Dr. Joel E.
Goldthwait and to be appointed to the visiting staff of the Orthopedic Department of the Mass- achusetts General Hospital, then directed by Dr.
Elliot G. Brackett. He was also appointed to the staff of the Robert Brigham Hospital, where in the next few years he perfected two important oper-
ative procedures in the surgery of arthritis—
posterior capsuloplasty in flexion contracture of the knee and arthroplasty of the elbow joint. In 1921 he became a recognized clinical teacher at Harvard Medical School.
The surgical experiences of the war had extended the field of orthopedic practice both in Great Britain and in the United States to embrace the treatment of recent fractures and dislocations and allied injuries of the locomotor system. At the Massachusetts General Hospital, the surgical rev- olution took place slowly. A combined fracture service was set up, in which both general and orthopedic surgeons shared the responsibilities. In 1925 a monograph on Fractures and Dislocations appeared under the joint authorship of Philip Wilson and W.A. Cochrane. Cochrane, who was to become the first orthopedic surgeon to be appointed to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, had worked both with Dr. Goldthwait and in the department at the Massachusetts General Hospi- tal. This textbook enjoyed considerable popular- ity; it was written in simple and lucid style, and it proved to be a useful book of reference for those working in the emerging fracture services. In the years that followed, the breadth of Philip Wilson’s interests is shown in the long list of his contribu- tions to the literature of orthopedic surgery.
On the retirement of Dr. Brackett, Robert Osgood became chief of the orthopedic service, but when elected to the John B. and Buckminster Brown Chair at Harvard, in accordance with tra- dition, he moved to the Children’s Hospital. The gap was filled for a few years only by Nathaniel Allison, who was looking toward Chicago, where a chair was soon to be created for him. The Mass- achusetts General Hospital was now faced by the choice between two outstanding men already in the orthopedic department—the brilliant virtuoso Marius Smith-Petersen and the gifted all-rounder Philip Wilson. The situation, seen from afar, seemed to many of us to point to the choice of Philip Wilson, but the selectors decided other- wise. Philip was deeply disappointed by their action, but when given the autonomous control of the fracture service, he continued to serve as a loyal member of the department. In 1934 a new career appeared on the horizon. He was invited to become Surgeon-in-Chief at the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled in New York. This was indeed a challenge, for the oldest orthopedic hos- pital in New York was slumbering.
The 21 years of Philip Wilson’s tenure of the office of Surgeon-in-Chief were to be years
362Who’s Who in Orthopedics
of remarkable achievements. He reorganized the staffing, changed the name of the hospital, estab- lished a medical arthritis service, and persuaded the board of trustees to sell the old hospital on 42nd Street, and build a new hospital on East 70th Street close to the New York Hospital and Cornell Medical School. But this was not all. As Emeri- tus Surgeon-in-Chief, and still occupied by an extensive private practice, Philip began to look around for philanthropic gifts, and from one gen- erous contribution the Caspary Research Building was built across the street from the main hospital block and completed in 1958.
For some years Philip acted as honorary direc- tor of the Research Unit, which now bears the inscription of the Philip D. Wilson Foundation.
Truly here is his monument in stone. His powers of statesmanship had never been better displayed than in the negotiations that led to the recognition by the Cornell Medical School of the Hospital for Special Surgery as a teaching unit for undergrad- uates. For a short time Philip enjoyed the title of clinical professor of orthopedic surgery, and on his statutory retirement was elected emeritus professor. All this was the transformation of his dream into reality. For here was a special hospi- tal giving the highest standards of the care of patients, teaching both undergraduates and post- graduates, and actively engaged in the promotion of research. Before this came to pass, the hospi- tal had already become a famous postgraduate training center for residents. Many of Philip’s pupils are to be found among the present-day leaders of orthopedic surgery, not only in North America, but in far distant countries. They are all united in deep affection for their master.
The outbreak of World War II came as an inter- ruption 5 years after the Wilson family had moved to New York. The fall of France and the evacua- tion of the remains of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkerque were events of deep concern to Germaine and Philip—both loyal Americans but at the same time good Europeans.
And so in September 1940, Philip arrived in the United Kingdom with the vanguard of the Amer- ican Hospital in Britain, a hospital financed by funds raised in the United States by friends of Great Britain and France. The story of this hospi- tal is recorded in documents now deposited in the library of the Hospital for Special Surgery.
Philip stayed some months in England to see the hospital installed at Park Prewett, Basingstoke, and shared with thousands the early bombings of London. He returned in December
1941 for a further term, the hospital having moved to the new Churchill Hospital at Oxford.
Between his tours, Wallace Cole of Minneapolis and Philip’s brother Harlan Wilson served in turn as Surgeon-in-Chief. For his contribution to the British wartime hospital services, Philip was awarded an Hon. CBE in 1948. The year before, France had made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Throughout his years as Surgeon-in-Chief at the Hospital for Special Surgery and in the years of strenuous activity that followed, Philip served on many public commissions and committees in New York and elsewhere concerned with the social problems of crippling diseases and of health insurance schemes. He was one of the founding fathers of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery and was president of this body in 1934. He served a term on the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons, firm in his belief that orthopedic surgery should be represented within the unity of surgery.
When the 8th Congress of the Société Interna- tionale de Chirurgie Orthopédique et de Trauma- tologie was held in New York in 1960, he was the natural choice to be elected president for the 1963 meeting in Vienna. Over the years he became an honorary member of almost every existing foreign orthopedic association and of many soci- eties representing surgery as a whole. Of the many honors bestowed on him in his long pro- fessional life, none gave him and his devoted wife more joy than the degree of Docteur Honoris Causa conferred on him at the Sorbonne in November 1966. The fact that his oldest friend in Great Britain, the writer of this memoir, received the same honor on that occasion, gave him added pleasure. The year before (1965), he had been made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, an appropriate distinction for one who in part at least came of Scottish ancestry.
Throughout his life Philip was punctilious in his attendance at annual meetings of surgical bodies of which he was a member. One meeting that he was loath to miss was that of the American Surgical Society, where his enduring curiosity, and his zest for learning about new ideas and procedures outside the bounds of his own specialty, could be given full play. The meeting of the American Surgical Society in Cincinnati in April 1969 was the last surgical gathering he was to attend. He returned to New York a little tired but inspired by the memory of
363Who’s Who in Orthopedics
Who’s Who in Orthopedics
a panel discussion on amputations in which he had been invited to speak on his unrivalled expe- riences in this field. This occasion carried him back to those days in France over half a century ago.
In Great Britain we have long seen Philip Wilson not only as an outstanding surgical leader in the United States, the doyen of orthopedic surgery, but as a world figure. For us he repre- sented the outward symbol of that “special rela- tionship” between the orthopedic surgeons of our two countries, created in the days of war by Sir Robert Jones and nurtured by Robert Osgood. It is appropriate that Boston has been the cradle of this Anglo-American comradeship, which each year gains new strength in the younger generation of orthopedic surgeons through the visits of the Exchange Fellows.
There are many more facets of the life story of this remarkable man, which for the time being must remain unrecorded. He not only worked hard to the very last of his days, but at times he played hard. As skipper of a schooner with the family as crew, the stories of his exploits and adventures are legendary. Philip Wilson was an incomparable host. In this role he was the civi- lized man par excellence. The memory of the gra- cious hospitality of Philip and Germaine in the penthouse on 14 East 90th Street, New York, will be cherished by many, young and old.
Philip Duncan Wilson died in New York City on May 6, 1969, in his 84th year. And as we try to see Philip Wilson’s life in the whole, of him the words from Tennyson’s Ulysses surely ring true—“I am a part of all that I have met.”
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