Healing: The Roots of Modern Orthopedics and Spine Surgery

These are the struggles, the human dramas and small miracles that created the practice of orthopedic and spine surgery. Every 3.6 seconds, someone, somewhere in the world is getting a new hip, knee or other orthopedic treatment as if it were a normal part of an aging life. Yet, before 1960, hip or knee replacement didn't exist. Figuring out how to treat end-stage arthritic joints, cancer ridden, deformed or broken bones was a tortuous journey. In just four decades, by the year 2000, modern orthopedics and spine care was created. For patients around the world, modern orthopedic surgery bestowed large and small miracles. Here is how the modern practice of fixing degenerative, diseased or fractured bones, muscles and nerves took root and grew.

Major branches of medicine do not just happen. It took 160 years to get to John Charnley. then just 40 years to assemble and deploy the global modern practice of orthopedic and spine surgery. to do so required a revolution of routinely safe and reproducible procedures, instruments and implants. Many of the pioneers are still among us. Their stories are the backbone of this book. In retrospect, the urgent imperative to heal - despite a lack of knowledge and tools - drove these visionary surgeons, engineers and manufacturers forward. Theories were tested. Advances came agonizingly slowly at first. By the 1980s, it was a flat out race. In another sense, the lesson of this history is the indispensability of collaboration - surgeons and manufacturers, engineers and scientists, managers and sales people. This book is the first in a series. It covers the underground part of a largely untold medical history - the roots of the largest sector in medicine.