The Welsh Clan that Transformed Orthopedic Surgery

Abstract

Modern orthopedic surgery arose from Hugh Owen Thomas (1834–1891) and Sir Robert Jones (1857–1933), uncle and nephew, two descendants of a family of bonesetters from North Wales and Liverpool, respectively. Thomas combined a formal medical education with his hereditary vocation into treatments that have endured for more than a century. The epitome is the Thomas splint, which was credited with a decrease in the mortality from open femur fractures to 20 from 80 per cent during World War I and is still in use for the emergency transport of lower extremity injuries. Jones was 15 when he became Thomas’ apprentice. By the end of the century, he was a leading figure in orthopedic surgery, at the forefront of the treatment of childhood deformities and the clinical use of X-rays. Enlisting in the Royal Army Medical Corps with the onset of World War I, he saw the need for a system of orthopedic care to treat soldiers with injured limbs that threatened to flood the country with crippled, disabled men. The centerpiece was the military orthopedic center, where surgeons devised integrated programs of surgery, physical therapy, and “curative workshops” to return war-injured soldiers to productive lives. With British surgeons conscripted to work at the Western Front, hundreds of American surgeons with little prior experience in orthopedics volunteered to work in the centers and thus received intensive training under Jones. Orthopedic surgery, traditionally part of the broader practice of surgery, thus emerged from the war as a full-time endeavor and a distinct surgical specialty.