Who’s Who in Orthopedics
After returning from England, he was appointed as a Gibney Fellow in the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. He then served as chief of orthopedic surgery at the Drew Field Station Hospital in Tampa, Florida. He was also the orthopedic consultant to the Third Air Force, which had 25,000 personnel at Drew Field. This base housed several hundred German prisoners of war, many of whom cooked for the hospital patients and the medical staff. He showed com- passion for the prisoners and conversed with them in fluent German.
In 1946, Dr. Leinbach opened a private prac- tice in St. Petersburg, Florida, becoming the third orthopedic surgeon in that city. His long interest in medicolegal issues soon led him to the Stetson University School of Law in De Land, Florida, where he taught for 26 years and became the Uni- versity’s first professor in the Department of Medical Jurisprudence. He later was elected to membership in the American College of Legal Medicine, an honor accorded to very few who do not hold a law degree.
After World War II, Dr. Leinbach returned to Europe regularly to learn from the leading orthopedic authorities there. He firmly believed that they were developing the foundation from which orthopedic surgery would evolve. He studied intramedullary nailing with Gerhard Küntscher, the prevention and treatment of skele- tal infections with Hans Willenegger in Liestal, Switzerland and the treatment of fractures with Lorenz Böhler in Vienna. He brought Dr.
Küntscher to the 1967 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, as his personal guest. His international travels were not immune from civil strife. He was in Paris when a bomb went off in the Eiffel Tower. In 1956, while walking on a Polish street during a labor strike, he had to duck to avoid gunfire that was less than a block away. While doing volun- teer work in 1963 in Saigon’s Cho-Ray Hospital, he heard the gunfire of insurrection as the gov- ernment was overthrown.
Dr. Leinbach recognized the importance of the work of Ellie and Albin Lambotte, the Belgian surgeons who established the principle of the tension band in the stabilization of fractures.
Albin Lambotte gave him a violin of his own making. (Dr. Leinbach had begun playing the violin as a young boy.) He formed a close friend- ship with Maurice Müller, who was expanding on the principles of the Lambottes as he developed the AO Group.
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Irwin S. LEINBACH
1907–1994
Irwin S. (Mike) Leinbach, an internationally known orthopedic surgeon, was an assistant clin- ical professor of orthopedic surgery in all three of Florida’s medical schools.
Mike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on February 8, 1907. He attended Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. In 1933, he received his medical degree from the University of Penn- sylvania in Philadelphia. He performed his intern- ship at Reading Hospital and his externship at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York City. In 1935, he was named an assistant in the Depart- ment of Anatomy at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia: that same year, he was appointed chief resident orthopedic surgeon in the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital, under A. Bruce Gill. He returned to Reading in 1936. Until 1941, he held the position of assistant orthopedic surgeon at Reading Hospital, where his uncle, Howard L. Leinbach, was an established orthopedist.
From February through August 1942, Dr.
Leinbach served as chief resident orthopedic surgeon at the American Hospital in Oxford, England, having responded to the call of Philip Wilson, Sr. for volunteers to staff the hospital.
There, he developed a lifelong personal and pro- fessional friendship with James E. Batman of Toronto, Canada. To increase his orthopedic knowledge, he visited with T.P. McMurray, G.R.
Girdlestone, W.R. Bristow, and Sir Reginald
Watson-Jones, British orthopedic leaders of that
time.
Who’s Who in Orthopedics He developed the Leinbach screw for fractures
of the olecranon, modified the Gosset femoral head–neck prosthesis for the treatment of defi- ciencies of the femoral neck, and invented the
“femur jack,” an instrument that is very helpful in exposing the femoral neck during reaming of the medullary canal. He performed more than 3,000 primary and revision total hip arthroplasties.
He was a founding member of both the Hip Society in the United States and the International Hip Society. In 1966, he received the Governor’s Award as Florida Physician of the Year, and he was selected as Citizen of the Year by the St.
Petersburg City Council. In 1993, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Joint Implant Surgery and Research Foundation, in commemoration of 60 years of surgery.
Dr. Leinbach decided to study medicine because it deals with human life, and he derived a lot of pleasure from life. In his office hung a small plaque with the inscription: “The funda- mental principle of medicine is love.” Thousands of patients benefited from his commitment and dedication.
He died on January 12, 1994, after a brief illness, in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was 86 years old. He had been working regularly in the out- patient clinic of the Bay Pines Veterans Adminis- tration Hospital until a few days before his death.
Dr. Leinbach was survived by his wife, Alice;
three daughters: Jenni Adams of Orlando, Judy Meserve of St. Petersburg, and Troy Kassing of Indianapolis; eight grandchildren; and five great- grandchildren. His only son, Tyler, died in a tragic cave-diving accident in 1960. Dr. Leinbach once said: “I have flown high enough to enjoy looking down on the clouds, and my great wife has been the wind beneath my wings.”
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