Who’s Who in Orthopedics

Who’s Who in Orthopedics

his closest friend since they were undergraduates together, wrote Recent Advances in Orthopedic

should have gone into further editions; it revealed the breadth of the authors’ interests. During the war, Ellis was posted to the emergency hospital at Park Prewett in Hampshire, where he worked with unremitting devotion. In 1945, he and Innes published a short but significant paper on “Battle Casualties Treated by Penicillin,” based on a study of no less than 15,000 cases. A quotation from this paper reveals his sanity at a time when there was much uncritical enthusiasm: “Penicillin has made no difference to the paramount impor- tance of early and adequate surgery; it has, in addition, produced new difficulties in that the effect of penicillin on contaminated wounds obscures the extent of the infection of the tissues, and makes it difficult to judge how radical surgery should be.” Lastly there was Ellis’s growing inter- est in disorders of the shoulder joint; he studied these puzzling conditions with patience and care, his employment of arthrography proved of immense value in the elucidation of injuries of the rotator cuff, and his published papers give some indication of what might have been expected from him, had he lived longer.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 15, 1953, V.H. Ellis had just seen the last patient at his fracture clinic at St. Mary’s Hospital when he suddenly collapsed and died. He was only 52.

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R.C. ELMSLIE

1878–1940

R.C. Elmslie spent the whole of his professional life as student and surgeon at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and at the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital, except during World War I, when he was in charge of the Military Orthopedic Hospital, Shepherd’s Bush. He spent 5 years as a demon- strator of pathology and his knowledge of this subject colored his work in orthopedics. To it, we owe the classical work on fibrocystic disease of bones, first published in 1914 and expanded subsequently in the Birthday Volume.

As an orthopedic surgeon, Elmslie was one of the greatest of his day, next only to Robert Jones and perhaps Tubby. His ability to think clearly, his wisdom, imperturbability and admirable judg- ment were his powerful assets. Indeed the writer has never worked with anyone whose judgment always proved so sound; it seemed that he was incapable of being wrong. He was a competent and neat operator who devized several first-class procedures. His only expressed vanity was to pride himself on sewing skin in, as he put it, “the manner of those who know best how to sew—

women.” Like Robert Jones, he devoted an enor-

mous amount of time to the social welfare,

education and after-care of crippled children. He

was in great demand for committee work in his

own hospital, government departments, the Royal

College of Surgeons (on the council of which he

served from 1933 until his death), the British

Orthopedic Association, the British Medical

Association, the Chartered Society of Physiother-

apy, and the Central Council for the Care of Crip- ples. His clear and logical exposition before the Select Committee of the House of Lords is said to have carried the greatest weight in deciding the Committee to reject the osteopaths’ claim for recognition. As a man, Elmslie lacked the warmth of Robert Jones, whose friend and admirer he always was. He was not easy to know—but his reserve did not prevent him inspiring the greatest enthusiasm and devotion in his pupils, which they still retain.

second year of residency at the Pennsylvania Crippled Children’s Hospital in Elizabethtown, he decided that working with crippled children was to be his specialty.

In the fall of 1936, Dr. Engh moved to the Washington, DC area and began his practice, which was to continue until his retirement in 1976. He started as assistant to another physician, but he was impatient to do more work with crip- pled children and saw a glaring need for such services. The area had no facilities that special- ized in orthopedic deformities, which were far more common in the past than they are today.

Poliomyelitis was a major problem, and club foot, dislocated hips, osteomyelitis, and curvature of the spine also contributed to the need for recon- structive surgeons and long-term hospital care.

Dr. Engh opened his own practice in 1938, in his home in Alexandria, Virginia, but he had a desire to own a clinic or hospital. He bought land in Arlington and established offices, which he called the Anderson Clinic. He also established a crippled children’s program through the Arlington Health Department. Previously, such children, especially in rural areas, were being seen only once or twice a year, and few operations were being done. At Dr. Engh’s center, the patients were seen weekly and received therapy. In addi- tion, he instituted community-based clinics for handicapped children at Gallinger Hospital (now DC General Hospital) in Washington and at Arlington Hospital in Arlington.

Dr. Engh traveled throughout the metropolitan Washington area to see patients at a half-dozen hospitals, frequently taking his wife and three children with him on weekends.

In the 1940s, Dr. Engh converted the physical- therapy floor of the Anderson Clinic into an 18- bed hospital, complete with iron lungs, to treat victims of poliomyelitis, because of the desperate need for beds for such patients. The construction of an entire hospital for orthopedic surgery fol- lowed a few years later. The original hospital was totally a volunteer effort, backed by the Arlington Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Northern Virginia Builders and Plumbers Association, and other organizations; it was built with donated materials and labor, on land donated by Dr. and Mrs. Engh. In the 1950s, the hospital’s name was changed to the National Hospital for Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, new wings were added, and services were expanded. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the hospital was designated by the federal government to serve as a pilot

Who’s Who in Orthopedics

Otto Anderson ENGH

1904–1988

Otto Engh was a native of Johnstown, Pennsyl- vania. One of six sons of immigrants—his father, a foreman in a steel mill, had come from Sweden, and his mother from Norway—he and his broth- ers were given the middle name of Anderson, which had been their father’s name before he emigrated and changed it to Engh.

After receiving an undergraduate degree in science from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, Otto Engh worked as a high-school science teacher and athletic coach in Johnstown. In 1935, he married Sara, who was also a teacher. He was a talented musician; he almost became a professional performer, but his wife encouraged him to pursue his medical career.

Dr. Engh received his medical degree from

Temple University, Philadelphia. During his