Reginald Watson-Jones

Reginald Watson-Jones (born March 4, 1902 in Brighton , Sussex , † August 9, 1972 ) was an English surgeon . He set the standard in fracture management and was a respected and influential surgeon in Britain in the mid- 20th century .

Life

Reginald Jones grew up as a teacher's son in Liverpool , where he studied medicine until 1926 after suffering from typhoid fever . In London he came across Robert Jones , who recognized his talent and secured his (unpaid) employment with the Royal Liverpool Infirmary . He turned to orthopedics after a hemangioma was resected on his leg . At twenty-four he was too young to be a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England ; he had to wait a year. In order to be differentiated from his mentor and the many colleagues of the same name, Jones added Watson , his mother's maiden name, to his name in the early 1930s .

Oswestry

In the late 1920s, not yet 30 years old, he became an orthopedic consultant at Shropshire Hospital in Oswestry , where he stayed for 40 years. In 1930 he published the first scientific publications in the (American) Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery . There were at least three a year. He became famous with his Instructional course lectures on fractures , which appeared in book form in 1939. Written “concisely and non-academic”, “the Bible” has been considered the standard work of conservative fracture treatment for decades - not least among surgeons in the armed forces of the United Kingdom . It has been translated into Spanish , Portuguese , Polish , German and French .

Royal Air Force

After this book was appointed (civil) orthopedist consultant of the Royal Air Force , Watson-Jones became a key figure in war surgery during World War II . He won Henry Osmond-Clarke to join the RAF and used his "political" influence in the Air Ministry . Across the UK he set up 10 hospitals for wounded soldiers; 2 or 3 surgeons were responsible for the 100 to 150 beds. At the same time he systematized the rehabilitation . The network was so effective that 77% of the soldiers were fully deployed again and only 4.8% were disabled and dismissed. Watson-Jones owes the Headley Court in Surrey , which is still used today for the rehabilitation of war-disabled soldiers.

In 1942 he was asked to set up an orthopedic and trauma surgery department at the Royal London Hospital . To her were all violations of the musculoskeletal system to bring.

George VI ennobled him for his services to the RAF . 1945. From 1946 to 1952 he was an orthopedic surgeon for George VI, then for the Queen Mother .

JBJS

The enormous increase in experience in trauma and war surgery prompted Sir Reginald in 1947 to set up a British branch of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery . In February 1948 the first British edition of the world's leading specialist journal for bone and joint surgery was published, as it was then. Watson-Jones was the legendary editor until his death, over 24 years. He was succeeded by Alan Graham Apley .

Like Lorenz Böhler , Watson-Jones was very reluctant to open up to surgical fracture treatment and intramedullary nailing. He initially considered Gerhard Küntscher's femoral nail on a British pilot to be an "experiment" and a violation of the Geneva Convention .

"The cause of nonunion of fractures is inadequate immobilization and nonunion of fractures is due to failure of surgeons much more than the failure of osteoblasts."

- Reginald Watson-Jones

Black Prince

Called "Black Prince" because of the color of his eyes, Watson-Jones married his wife Muriel in 1930. He had adopted two children with her . When he remarried in 1971, leukemia emerged. The following year he died of a stroke .

Honorary positions

• President of the British Orthopedic Association
• President of the Orthopedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine
• Vice President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England

Individual evidence

1. ↑ M. Hagy: "Keeping up with the Joneses" -the story of Sir Robert Jones and Sir Reginald Watson-Jones. In: The Iowa orthopedic journal. Volume 24, 2004, pp. 133-137, PMID 15296220 , PMC 1888408 (free full text).
2. ↑ : SIR REGINALD WATSON-JONES, FRCS In: Canadian Medical Association journal. Volume 62, number 4, April 1950, p. 388, PMID 20324553 , PMC 1591869 (free full text).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} OrthoSuperSite  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Robert Jones and Dame Agnes Hunt Hospital
5. ↑ ScienceMuseum
6. ↑ Obituary in JBJS  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• Headley Court