H. Jackson Burrows writes:
Dinny Glissan was a perfectionist, who looked for this quality in his patients and in his assistants. They were left in no doubt when they failed to rise to his own high standards. He held strong principles, and when these were at issue he was formidable indeed. Yet he had the kindest, gentlest and most generous character—with a sense of humour—that made him the most lovable of men. He both gave and inspired loyalty. His integrity was complete. Everything interested him, particularly natural history in a land richly endowed. He had a rare command of the mother tongue, and his letters were a joy to read because of the grace of their construction and perfection of their vocabulary. He was most happily married to a devoted wife, who shared the tribulations of the illness that clouded his last five years.
Denis Glissan died on May 19, 1958.
dling of this disaster guaranteed success for many future ventures.
He became President of the local Medical Association, ABC Traveling Fellow to North America in 1956 and Hunterian Lecturer of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1956.
He was appointed OBE in 1959, and traveled to Africa in 1961 as Nuffield Traveling Fellow.
In 1965 he was appointed to the Princess Alice Chair in Tropical Orthopedics and Rehabil- itation. He was Secretary General of World Orthopedic Concern and on the board of Ortho- pedics Overseas. He ran the Jamaican wheelchair sports team. In 1984 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Toronto. He received the Order of Jamaica and was knighted in 1986. He was the Lipmann Kessel Traveling Professor to the Third World in 1990 and was currently Chairman of the Caribbean Medical Research Council. He wrote on many subjects including sickle-cell disease, bone infections and tibia vara.
John believed that an operation was but an inci- dent in a patient’s life. He worked on all aspects of a person’s recovery. He started schools for the handicapped, initially for those with polio and paraplegia, a company to employ the disabled, a farm for the handicapped, a Cheshire village, a fairground to employ the handicapped and to raise money for a rehabilitation center, a prosthetics and orthotics center, a physiotherapy school, a wheelchair sports program, and a hospice. In addition, he initiated the introduction of safe driving laws and legal aid for the injured. He had a unique ability to see what was needed, to find like-minded people and to set things in motion despite the economic woes of Jamaica. He wrote that “The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because all we can do is a little.”
He initiated projects with great enthusiasm and they developed a momentum of their own. For example, the school at Mona began in a wooden refugee camp; today it has 2,000 students and has been taken over by the university.
John was a dynamo. He was an early riser and wrote letters for a couple of hours before visiting the rehabilitation center between 7 and 8 a.m. He would then go on to the university to attend clinics, to do undergraduate teaching and to operate. Patients knew and loved him as both friend and doctor. All day he was networking. He described his sense of the orthopedic obligation in an editorial entitled “Religio medici 1994” in the December 1994 issue of the American volume 120
Who’s Who in Orthopedics
Sir John GOLDING
1921–1996
John Golding was born in London and educated at Marlborough College, Cambridge University and the Middlesex Hospital, where he was in- fluenced by Philip Wiles. Military service took him to Egypt and he later worked at the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital. In 1953 he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Orthopedics at the new University College of the West Indies. A year later the major epidemic of polio started. His han-
of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (1994;
76-A: 1759–1763).
John Golding was a kind, charming, witty man, informed about everything. His prodigious memory kept paperwork to a minimum and pro- vided a constant supply of entertaining stories.
People enjoyed working with him on projects. He had a novelist’s perception of character, which enabled him to find people in the community to help. The projects all grew out of the commu- nity’s needs and it was the community that achieved them—steered by John.
After taking his grandchildren to the zoo, John Golding came home, collapsed and died. A state funeral followed and all Jamaica stopped for the day. This remarkable man had been a hero in Jamaica since 1954 when he coped with a polio epidemic and with its aftermath. His kindness, enthusiasm and ability to carry things through were held up as a national example.
He leaves his wife Patricia, his son Mark and daughter Anna, together with thousands of friends and patients who are better for having known him.
from Manchester University in 1932 and became FRCS (England) in 1935; I was a Hunterian pro- fessor in 1940.
After chance meetings with Robert Jones, I was determined to become an orthopedic surgeon and joined the orthopedic unit of Manchester Royal Infirmary, where I came under the influence of Harry Platt and Henry Osmond-Clarke. From 1942 to 1946, I served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as an orthopedic specialist, and in 1945 I was appointed MBE (Military), an honor which, as a Welsh nationalist, I tried to refuse, only to find that refusal of military “honors” is, appar- ently, impossible.
After demobilization, John Charnley and I were appointed honorary orthopedic surgeons to Manchester Royal Infirmary. I also joined the staff of the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Ortho- pedic Hospital in Oswestry. In 1952, I was appointed director of the University Department of Orthopedic Surgery in Manchester Royal Infir- mary. I retained this office and my post at Oswestry until 1973, when I retired to the village of Eglwysbach, where I have been able to pur- sue my interests in Welsh culture with great happiness.
My career in Manchester was a partial failure.
I had hoped to re-establish a first-class academic department but did not succeed in so doing, despite serving on or chairing all the appropriate committees. My unhappiness in Manchester, however, was fully compensated for by my great pleasure in working in Oswestry and the North Welsh clinics. There I had splendid colleagues and excellent facilities.
I published widely and a monograph on Pott’s paraplegia (Oxford University Press, 1956), written in collaboration with my old school-fellow Herbert Seddon and my Oswestry colleague Robert Roaf, led to my becoming hon- orary secretary of the Medical Research Council subcommittee on the treatment of spinal tubercu- losis. After Seddon’s retirement I became chair- man in 1974 and my duties involved regular travel in Africa and the Far East until 1981.
I was fortunate to be a visiting professor, guest lecturer or examiner in many countries, particu- larly in the Far East, and was the president’s guest lecturer at the meeting of the American Orthope- dic Association in 1972.
I was fortunate to have no interest in or talent for sport, and was able to devote my time to work, the Welsh language and literature, chamber music and opera. I was delighted to become a member 121
Who’s Who in Orthopedics
David Lloyd GRIFFITHS
1908–1997
I was born in 1908 in Wales, of Welsh parents, and brought up as monoglot English, which I remedied as soon as possible. In 1917 we moved to Manchester, and I was educated at William Hulme’s Grammar School, of which I eventually became Chairman of the Governors. I graduated
