Ronald FURLONG1909–2002

Who’s Who in Orthopedics

107

Ronald FURLONG

1909–2002

Ronald Furlong, the pioneer of hydroxyapatite- coated hip replacements, died on August 12, 2002 at the age of 93. He is buried in Weggis, Switzerland, which fittingly reflects his strong professional and cultural links with the continent.

He was honored by Pope Pius XII with a special blessing for his work among the civilian popula- tion in Milan at the end of World War II. He was the “discoverer” of Küntscher, the nail and then the man. In Italy with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), Furlong developed a particular expertise in plating fractures of the femur and, at the base hospital in Caserta, accumulated a per- sonal series of 200 cases. After the Allied Army took Italy, he was responsible for inspecting a German military hospital. Here, he recognized something very unusual in the treatment of a frac- tured femur and, at the end of the war, was instructed by Whitehall to find out about this new device. After a hair-raising journey through war-torn Europe, he eventually located Professor Küntscher in Kiel via the good offices of Profes- sor Böhler (a friend of Ronnie Furlong’s old chief, Rowley Bristow), whom he found in hiding in Vienna. The currency for this extraordinary adventure was cigarettes and the mode of trans- port a jeep. He returned to Britain much impressed by Küntscher’s work, together with a precious trefoil-shaped intramedullary nail, which he personally delivered to Maurice Down of Down Brothers, the famous old British manu-

Jules FROMENT

1878–1946

Jules Froment was Professor of Medicine at Lyons, and devoted his life to neurology, com- bining diligent observation, a philosophical ap- proach and debating skill.

Graduating in 1906 with a thesis on disease of the heart in thyrotoxicosis, he remained at Lyons until the Great War. After a year at the front, he joined a nerve injuries unit at Rennes, and later was at Paris with Babinski. During this time he evolved a series of tests for nerve dysfunction, the best known being his sign of ulnar nerve weakness; another was loss of the hollow of the anatomical snuff box in radial nerve injury.

After the war he ran a Red Cross Hospital in Lyons, and the encephalitis epidemic of 1918–1922 provided another intellectual chal- lenge. In 1926 he nearly died as a result of being severely injured by one of his patients.

Froment pointed out the difference between

a pinch grip and grasping, both of which are

impaired by a low ulnar nerve palsy due to weak-

ness of adductor pollicis. He introduced a test to

show this. Today it is used to assess flexor polli-

cis brevis.