Arthur Rocyn JONES1883–1972

cine, the International Academy of Pathology, and numerous other national and international scien- tific organizations.

Those who knew him would agree with the wards of the late Samuel Kleinberg, MD, written in 1951 in the dedication of a volume of the Bulletin of the Hospital for Joint Diseases com- memorating Dr. Jaffe’s 25th anniversary at that institution. Dr. Kleinberg remarked, “He [Dr.

Jaffe] is decidedly individualistic, but with opin- ions based on reasoning and experience. He is strong of will and freely gives his opinions, letting the ‘chips’ of information fly where they will. As a result he is a feared but respected antagonist.

Truth and integrity govern his opinions and actions.” Dr. Jaffe was a devoted and fiercely loyal friend to those of his colleagues with whom he collaborated and whom he respected. He was revered by his students and especially by the hun- dreds of house officers in the New York area who attended his conferences and learned pathology from the man who “wrote the book.”

In view of his extraordinary devotion to his labors, it was a source of surprise to many that Dr.

Jaffe had a life outside of the hospital, but it was indeed a rich one. In 1931 he married Clarisse Kross, a lovely and charming lady. They had two sons. The younger son, Henry L., Jr., tragically preceded his father in death by several years. The older, Arthur, was Professor of Mathematical Physics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Genial host and hostess, the Jaffes enjoyed entertaining but liked to spend time with their family and close relations even more. Dr. Jaffe loved to garden and approached this activity with the same passion as his scientific pursuits. He constructed a terrace on the grounds of one of their homes in Pelham and raised flowers, except for a brief period during World War II when he, like many of his neighbors, converted it to a victory garden. As a child, Dr. Jaffe had played the violin, and he passionately loved music. He had an extensive record collection and often attended concerts. The Jaffes vacationed in Vermont for many years, and Dr. Jaffe enjoyed outdoor activities with his wife and children.

The worlds of pathology and radiology, and especially orthopedics, are deeply in the debt of this extraordinary man, who in his lifetime brought order to the chaos of bone pathology, served as the final arbiter for countless puzzling cases, and brought enlightenment to a vast

number of students and disciples. He died on January 12, 1979, in his 82nd year.

163

Who’s Who in Orthopedics

Arthur Rocyn JONES

1883–1972

Arthur Rocyn Jones, consulting surgeon to the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital, died peace- fully at his home on Stanmore Hill on February 13, 1972, at the age of 88 and the vigil of his devoted wife was over. The last 3 years, a period of increasing frailty, had brought several alarms about his health and once a spell of some weeks in hospital, but a strong Welsh constitution always came to the rescue, keeping him on his feet with a clear memory of the exciting events of his early career in orthopedics, almost to the very end. He was equally sustained by the deep but unobtrusive Christian belief that had governed the conduct of his life.

Over the years, Rocyn, as he was known affec- tionately, forged a strong personal link with the early days of orthopedic surgery in Great Britain.

In 1918, sponsored by Elmslie, the thinker, and

Bankart, the man of speedy action, he had been

elected a founder member of the British Ortho-

pedic Association, of which in due course he

became the historian. To mark his 85th birthday,

the number of The Journal of Bone and Joint

Surgery for May 1968 was dedicated to him. The

warm appreciation it contained, from the flowing

pen of Jackson Burrows, gave so many accurate and felicitous details of his life and influence.

A special link with the grass roots period of British orthopedics may perhaps be mentioned.

For many years, Rocyn was a close friend of Muirhead Little, who gave him some priceless relics of his father W.J. Little, notably a case full of tenotomes and necropsy instruments, and an annotated copy of the thesis in Latin on the treat- ment of club foot presented to the University of Berlin in 1837 for his doctorate. These are now in the safe keeping of the Institute of Orthopedics, which he helped to establish in 1946.

On his death, Arthur Rocyn Jones left his wife, Margaret, and a daughter, Glayne.

Baschurch in earlier days, and to Oswestry in later days, the children almost fell out of bed and cer- tainly out of their spinal frames in order to laugh with him. So, too, at Roehampton in the years of the First World War, his enthusiastic spirit of hap- piness made wounded soldiers believe that life could still be good.

Robert Jones was born in 1857 at Rhyl, a small town on the North Wales coast; and he died in 1933 at a little village in the Welsh county of Montgomeryshire. All his apprenticeship was served with his uncle Hugh Owen Thomas, the first to be medically qualified of many generations of unqualified bone-setters who had practiced in the hills of Wales and the lowlands of Anglesey, an island off the coast of Wales. There can be no doubt that Robert Jones was a Welshman.

But there was no “Welsh Nationalist” about him.

Liverpool was the first center of his activities;

then it was London; then Great Britain; then the United States; and then the whole world. It is not a far cry to see that whether in surgery or in any other activity, great men do not remain parochial, or local, or national, but rather international and worldwide in their endeavors. The humble origin of Robert Jones in this small Welsh town led ulti- mately to a great British–American alliance in the world of surgery, and then to his establishment of the International Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology, of which he was the first president, this body of surgeons expressing almost inarticu- late admiration by creating for him the unprece- dented title of “Permanent President.” Interlocal in the beginning, he was international in the end.

Robert Jones qualified in medicine in 1878, and gained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1889. He was soon appointed general surgeon to the Liverpool Stanley Hospital and, while still a young man of 30 years, general surgeon to the Royal Southern Hospital of Liverpool. This broad surgical expe- rience stood him in good stead in later years, when his abilities were applied to that part of general surgery concerned with disorders of the limbs and spine—orthopedic surgery. He was of course strongly influenced by his uncle Hugh Owen Thomas, to whom he was apprenticed at 11 Nelson Street—the house that became a Mecca for surgeons from all over the world. We have said that Hugh Owen Thomas was descended from a long line of Welsh bone-setters; but even his father Evan Thomas, unqualified as he may have been, treated thousands of patients not only from the industrial north of England but from

Who’s Who in Orthopedics

Robert JONES

1857–1933

The kindly word, the encouraging smile, the twin- kling eye with creases all going up in the right direction, and the whole magnetic personality of Robert Jones, seem as vivid today as they were 30 years ago when he was at the peak of his endeavor in creating and establishing the princi- ples, science and art of orthopedic surgery.

Perhaps his greatest contribution was to the art of

surgery because he taught us all to be so infec-

tious in our happiness that disabled and distressed

patients also became happy. I never knew a more

joyful man with his quips, pranks, jokes and

beaming smile, so that when he went to