Abstract
Fractures, like crippled children, were a major interwar issue. By the 1930s, provision for their treatment — or, rather, the lack of it — was nearly as topical as tuberculosis and maternal health. The subject was extensively discussed in the press, became a subject of government inquiry, and in various ways forged new links between medicine, industry, trade unions, and local and national government. The BMA, the British Hospitals’ Association, the Federation of British Industry, the Federated Employers’ Insurance Association, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and the London County Council (LCQ, along with the Ministries of Health, Labour and Pensions were only some of the more visible parties to become actively involved in the issue.
‘ Earlier versions of this chapter appeared in Medical History (volume 31, 1987) and in J. V. Pickstone (ed.), Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective (Macmillan, 1992).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Adolf Lorenz, My Life and Work (New York, 1936), pp. 335–6.
Biographical information on Platt comes from the appreciations by H. Osmond-Clarke and others in Platt’s birthday volume of the JBJS, 48B (1966), pp. 613–22; various incidental lectures and addresses by Platt (mostly unpublished); and several interviews conducted by myself and others between 1974 and 1985. See also the introduction to Stella Butler, ‘A Handlist for the Papers of Sir Harry Platt’, typescript, 1984. On the RNOH see J. A. Cholmeley, The History of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (1985); on St Peter’s, see
A. Clifford Morson (ed.), St. Peter’s Hospital for Stone, 1860–1960 (Edinburgh, 1960); and on St Mark’s, see Lindsay Granshaw, St. Mark’s Hospital, London: the social history of a specialist hospital (1985).
On Barclay and the others, and on the Ancoats Hospital, see John V. Pickstone, Medicine and Industrial Society (Manchester, 1985), pp. 145–6, 204–7.
J.L. Thornton, ‘Orthopaedic Surgeons at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London’, St Barts Hosp. J., 59 (1955), pp. 195–204, at p. 200.
See P. Gray, ‘Grangethorpe Hospital Rusholme, 1917–1929’, Trans. Lancs. & Ches. Antiquarian Soc, 78, (1975), pp. 51–64.
For the notion made explicit, see Melvin Henderson, ‘Leadership in Orthopaedic Surgery’, JBJS, 16 (1934), pp. 495–98.
Notably by H.E. Moore in his influential ‘Avoidable Wastage in Connexion with Industrial Injuries’, Liverpool Medico-Chirurg. J., 41 (1933), pp. 19–50. For discussion on Moore’s work, see below Ch. 10.
Cf. Lever Stewart, ‘The Industrial Surgeon’s Treatment of Fractures’, J. Indust. Hygiene, 8 (1926), pp. 283–7;
R.N. Gray, ‘Disability and Cost of Industrial Fractures: a comparison based upon an impersonal study of statistics of fractures treated by the specially trained surgeon and the general practitioner’, paper delivered to the AOA meeting, June 1927, JBJS, 10 (1928), pp. 27–39; idem, ‘Rehabilitation after Industrial Fractures: a plea for care, caution and further scientific study in the use of physical therapy’, Rehab. Rev., 1 (1927), pp. 285–8;
W. A. Rogers, ‘End Results and the Follow-up in Orthopaedic Surgery’, JBJS, 10 (1928), pp. 104–7. See also the comments in
Thomas N. Bonner, The Kansas Doctor (Lawrence, 1959), pp. 226ff.
See, for example, C. Max Page and W. Rowley Bristow, The Treatment of Fractures in General Practice (1923); and
William Heneage Ogilvie, Treatment of Fractures in General Practice, 2 vols. (1932). John Hosford (a general surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital) began the preface to his Fractures and Dislocations in General Practice (1939) with the words: ‘I can answer the question why has yet another book on “Fractures” been written by saying that it is in response to the request of a number of students and recently qualified men.’ Service at the Rhode Island Hospital upon its inception in 1931). See JBJS, 15 (1933), p. 327 and 25 (1943), pp. 702–3.
Anne Digby and Nick Bosanquet, ‘Doctors and Patients in an Era of National Health Insurance and Private Practice, 1913–1938’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 41 (1988), pp. 74–94 at p. 91. Attention was paid to the legal risks in the primers cited above.
See Frank Honigsbaum, The Division in British Medicine (1979), pp. 146–8 et passim. Since 1923 there had been a BMA Orthopaedic Section (of which Openshaw was the first president) which was intended to interest GPs and specialists in orthopaedic matters.
Voluntary Hospitals Committee, Final Report, 1928. Cmd 1335. See also John Pater, The Making of the National Health Service (1981), pp. 4–13.
King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London, Ambulance Case Disposal Committee: Report of a Special Committee, 1924. For discussion of this and other literature relating to accident and emergency services in the interwar period, see K. S. Cliff, ‘The Development and Organisation of Accident and Emergency Services’, DM thesis, Southampton University, 1981, pp. 38–76.
See E.M. Bick, Source Book of Orthopaedic Surgery (Baltimore, 1948), pp. 293–4;
W.H. Ogilvie, ‘Physiology and the Surgeon’, Edin. Med. J., 43 (1936), reprinted in his Surgery: orthodox and heterodox (Oxford, 1948), pp. 147–67 at p. 152;
W.J. Eastwood, ‘Orthopaedics: old and new’, Liverpool Medico-Chirurg J., 45 (1937), pp. 186–94 at pp. 190–1; and Platt, ‘The Evolution of the Treatment of Fractures’, Manchester Univ. Med. School Gaz., 17 (1938), pp. 56–62 at p. 59. Böhler’s work on fractures was still widely consulted in the 1950s.
Hey Groves, ‘A Surgical Adventure: an autobiographical sketch’, reprinted from Bristol Med.-Chirurg. J., 50, (1933), p. 22.
See Arnold Wilson and Hermann Levy, Workmen’s Compensation, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1941), p. 203.
J. Cohen, ‘Orthopaedics,’ in J. Walton, P. B. Brown and R. B. Scott (eds), Oxford Companion to Medicine (Oxford, 1986), p. 959.
For references and for discussion on both planning bodies, see Pickstone, Medicine and Industrial Society, pp. 287ff., 301ff., and Neville M. Goodman, Wilson Jameson: architect of national health (1970), p. 133 et passim.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1993 Roger Cooter
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cooter, R. (1993). The Fracture Movement. In: Surgery and Society in Peace and War. Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10235-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10235-5_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-64283-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-10235-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)