Orthopedics
The oldest surgery there is, and the one that leaves the most evidence, because bone survives. A trepanned skull from about 3300 BC, splints from Egyptian tombs, a Greek bench with winches for pulling a dislocated shoulder back into place, and a Sanskrit treatise on fracture management that predates or matches Hippocrates. The word itself was coined in 1741 by a physician who was writing child-rearing advice for parents and feuding with the surgeons, and his famous crooked tree tied to a stake was a metaphor about raising children straight, not a picture of a brace. Then anaesthesia, antisepsis that took twenty years to win and was superseded anyway, and an x-ray whose use on broken bones appeared in the very first newspaper story about it. Wars filled the wards and the workshops, though the science that made the difference was mostly civilian and the first modern trauma service was built for a Manchester canal. Joints were replaced in plastic that failed, then in metal that failed again fifty years later in the same way, and the thing that caught it the second time was a registry. This archive covers what was done and when, and leaves the how to the textbooks.
A chronological documentary of 947 moments spanning 3300 BC–2026 on Loreline.
Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20
Eras
- Bones, Bone itself, and the study of it. Pathological specimens, museum jars, dissection and the anatomy theatres, Vesalius in 1543 and the centuries of engravings made after him, the Persian and Arabic anatomical manuscripts, and a trepanned skull from about 3300 BC that shows the patient survived. This is where the field keeps its evidence, and much of it is older than the specialty that claims it.
- Books, The paper trail, which on this subject is unusually rich. The Edwin Smith papyrus from about 1600 BC, the earliest surviving surgical document. Vesalius in 1543 and the engravings copied from him for centuries. The Sushruta Samhita. Al-Zahrawi. The great illustrated atlases of the nineteenth century, the journals, the case books, and the trade catalogues. These are instructional documents by intent, and they are held here as historical objects: what they are and why they mattered, never what they instruct.
- Splints, Holding bone still, which is most of what this specialty actually does. Splints and bandaging, the plaster of Paris bandage and the argument about who introduced it, corsets and spinal jackets, the Thomas splint, the Milwaukee brace, calipers, and the traditional bonesetters who worked alongside and often ahead of the profession. On the Thomas splint, note what this archive does not say: the famous wartime mortality figure is not established, the sources disagree, and Thomas himself died in 1891, more than twenty years before the war it is credited with changing.
- Prosthetics, Replacing what was lost. A wooden toe from an Egyptian burial, the iron hand of Gotz von Berlichingen, the limb workshops that grew after every war, Roehampton, the American limb trade and its patents, and the modern line from Stoke Mandeville and Ludwig Guttmann through osseointegration and running blades. The people wearing the limbs are here as much as the limbs themselves.
- Instruments, The tools, and the oldest continuous thread in the whole subject. Amputation saws with griffin-head handles, bone chisels and osteotomes, trephines, Liston knives, traction apparatus, the Hippocratic bench with its winches, the instrument illustrations in al-Zahrawi, and the fitted cases that surgeons carried. Also the trade catalogues of the instrument makers, which are a large and badly under-used documentary record of what was actually available to buy and when.
- Wards, The buildings and the systems. Fracture wards, the open-air sanatoria for tuberculosis of the spine, the polio wards and their respirators, rehabilitation centres, and the specialist hospitals built for children with rickets and deformity. Also the accident service Robert Jones built for the Manchester Ship Canal between 1888 and 1893, which is a civilian industrial origin for the modern trauma system and a useful corrective to the idea that war invented everything here.
- War Surgery, What happened when the wounded arrived in numbers. Larrey and the flying ambulances, the American Civil War, the evacuation chains of both world wars, limb salvage against amputation, and veteran rehabilitation afterwards. Handled as documented history and not as spectacle. Much of the surviving material shows identifiable patients who could not consent to being photographed, so it is included where it carries the history and the instrument or the ward is preferred to the wound.
- People, The surgeons, the makers and the patients. Pare, who revived the arterial ligature that Galen had used and medieval Europe had forgotten, and who wrote up the boiling oil himself. Andry, who named the field while writing advice for parents. Thomas and his nephew Jones. Ilizarov in Kurgan, invisible to the West for twenty years. And the people the histories usually leave out: the bonesetters, the limb fitters, the nurses, and the patients whose photographs are the actual record.
- Implants, Things left inside the body. Plates, screws, nails and rods, and above all the artificial joint: the ivory and acrylic experiments, Charnley, and the plastic cup that wore out catastrophically before he found one that did not. The most useful thing in this segment is a repetition. Charnley's Teflon failure and the 2010 recall of a metal-on-metal hip are the same failure fifty years apart, debris from a bearing surface provoking destructive reaction in the tissue around it, and metal-on-metal had already failed once before that. What caught it the second time was neither the manufacturers nor the trials but the national joint registries, in England and Australia, independently.
- X-rays, Seeing inside, which changed this field faster than anything before it. Rontgen published in December 1895 and the surgical use on broken bones was in the first newspaper story about the discovery, on 5 January 1896, with clinical fracture plates within weeks. Compare antisepsis, a cheap idea that took twenty years to be accepted and was then superseded by asepsis. Also the early tubes and fluoroscopes, the shoe-fitting machines, the memorial in Hamburg to the radiologists who died of their own equipment, and the later imaging that followed.
- - Trepanned skull, found at Börnecke Schützenholz, c. 3300 BC, human skull - Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum. Exhibit in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig, Germany. Trepanation, the cutting of an opening in the skull, is among the oldest operations for which there is physical evidence, and trepanned skulls with healed margins survive in museum collections worldwide, showing that people lived afterwards.
- - Eygptian Medicine; Papyrus. Edwin Smith Papyrus Recto Column 2 (Cases 3-6). The Edwin Smith Papyrus, copied circa 1600 BCE and thought to derive from an older text, sets out 48 cases of wounds and fractures ordered from the skull downward.
- - EdSmPaPlateVIandVIIPrintsx. Edwin Smith Papyrus, Recto Column 7 (left) and Column 6 (right), containing Cases 12-20. The Edwin Smith Papyrus, copied circa 1600 BCE and thought to derive from an older text, sets out 48 cases of wounds and fractures ordered from the skull downward.
- - Images from Edwin Smith Papyrus. Edwin Smith Papyrus Recto Column 14 (Cases 41-43) Original papyrus on left, Hieroglyphic transliterations on right. The Edwin Smith Papyrus, copied circa 1600 BCE and thought to derive from an older text, sets out 48 cases of wounds and fractures ordered from the skull downward.
- - Edwin Smith Papyrus v2. The Edwin Smith papyrus, the world's oldest surviving surgical document. The Edwin Smith Papyrus, copied circa 1600 BCE and thought to derive from an older text, sets out 48 cases of wounds and fractures ordered from the skull downward.
- - Page from Edwin Smith surgical papyrus... 2 (Cases 3-6). The Edwin Smith Papyrus, copied circa 1600 BCE and thought to derive from an older text, sets out 48 cases of wounds and fractures ordered from the skull downward.
- - Reduction of a dislocated mandible by a Greek surgeon.. 's 1544 commentary on the Hippocratic surgical texts.
- - The Susruta-Samhita or Sahottara-Tantra (A Treatise on Ayurvedic Medicine) LACMA M.87.271a-g (1 of 8). Nepal, Text- 12th-13th century; Images- 18th-19th century Books Ink and opaque watercolor on palm leaf Gift of Emeritus Professor and Mrs. Thomas O. Ballinger (M.87.271a-g) South and Southeast Asian Art. The Sushruta Samhita, circa 600 BCE, describes the management of fractures and dislocations, including a classification of fracture types.
- - Treatise on Surgery of al-Zahrawi (CBL Ar 3172, ff. 49b-50a). Treatise on Surgery (Al-tasrif li-man' ajiza'an al-tal'if) of al-Zahrawi. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, latinised Albucasis, of Cordoba, wrote the thirty-volume Kitab al-Tasrif whose final surgical volume was illustrated with drawings of instruments.
- - Left Hand Prosthetic at the Art Institute of Chicago. Late 16th century left hand prosthetic (iron hand) from the George F. Harding Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. Gotz von Berlichingen was a sixteenth century German knight whose prosthetic iron hands survive.
- - Unidentified object. A lead alloy unidentified object; possibly a Post Medieval decorative element from a house wall. Bonesetters were unlicensed, frequently hereditary practitioners of manipulation who persisted alongside and in competition with the medical profession into the twentieth century, and in some regions to the present.
- - Prosthesis, 16th century; A. Pare. Prosthesis, 16th century;. Pare. Ambroise Pare revived the ligature of arteries in amputation in place of hot cautery. He did not invent it: Galen used it and al-Zahrawi described it, and it was largely lost in medieval Europe.
- - Amputation knife, Europe, 1501-1600. The curved sickle shape of this amputation knife is known as falciform. Surgical instrument and appliance trade catalogues are a major and under-used visual record of what was actually made and sold, as against what was written about.
- - Traction apparatus, Italy, 1501-1550. Traction was a common form of treatment for bone fractures. Traction apparatus is among the oldest continuous ideas in the field, described in the Hippocratic texts and still recognisable in nineteenth century extension beds.
- - Amputation saw, Europe, 1501-1600. The ornate appearance of this amputation saw was not unusual for this period. Amputation saws are the emblematic instrument of pre-anaesthetic surgery.
- - Berlichingen Eiserne Hand 2. Iron Hand (Prosthesis) of Götz von Berlichingen, originally from c. 1510, 19th century steel engraving. Gotz von Berlichingen was a sixteenth century German knight whose prosthetic iron hands survive.
- - Chirurgia e Graeco in Latinum conversa, traduction en latin par Vidus Vidius - btv1b90670219 (236 of 356). Sujet : Galien, Claude (0131?-0201?) Hippocrate (0460-0377 av. The Hippocratic bench, or scamnum, was a wooden traction apparatus with windlasses.
- - A human skeleton, seen from the back, bent forward with his hands clasped to his skull, after Vesalius. Engraving by Benard, late 18th century, after a woodcut, 1543.. 1543.
- - A human skeleton, seen from the back, bent forward with his hands clasped to his skull, after Vesalius. Engraving by Benard, 1779, after a woodcut, 1543.. 1543.
- - A skeleton leaning on a spade. Line engraving by J. Tinney, 1743, after A. Vesalius, 1543.. A skeleton leaning on a spade. Line engraving by J. Tinney, 1743, after. Vesalius, 1543. Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica in 1543.
- - A human skeleton, seen from the front, resting the bones of his left forearm on a spade handle, after Vesalius. Engraving by Benard, 1779, after a woodcut, 1543.. 1543.
- - A human skeleton, seen from the front, resting the bones of his left forearm on a spade handle, after Vesalius. Engraving by Benard, late 18th century, after a woodcut, 1543.. 1543.
- - A human skeleton, seen from the front, resting the bones of his right forearm on a spade handle, after Vesalius. Engraving 1778, after an engraving by Prevost, 1762, after a woodcut, 1543.. 1543.
- - A human skeleton, leaning against a tomb, after Vesalius: lateral view. Engraving by Benard, 1779, after a woodcut, 1543.. 1543.
- - A human skeleton, seen from the front, resting the bones of his left forearm on a spade handle, after Vesalius. Engraving 1769, after Prevost, 1762, after a woodcut, 1543.. 1543.
- - Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543. Vesalius, Andreas, 1514-1564 Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem; Basileae, 1543; EPB/D 6560/D. Page 192: skeleton leaning against a wall. Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica in 1543.
- - Andreae Vesalii Bruxellensis. Anatomical work by Andreae Vesalii Bruxellensis (Vesalius). Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica in 1543.
- - Artzneybuch. 1546. Surgical Instruments. Artzneybuch kostlich fur mancherley Kranchheit des gantzen Leibs. Fitted instrument cases were sold as sets, and they record what a surgeon of the period was actually equipped to do, as against what the textbooks recommended.
- - Ambroise Paré using the ligature when amputating on the batt. Nineteenth and early twentieth century operative atlases are heavily digitised and are literally instructional documents. They are admissible here as artefacts of their period.
- - Ambroise Paré using a ligature on an artery of an amputated leg of a soldier, during the Siege of Metz, 1553. Photogravure after T. Chartran, 1889.
- - Anatomisch theater Andreae Vesalii Bruxellensis, invictissimi Caroli V. Imperatoris medici, de Humani corporis fabrica Libri septem (titel op object) Titelpagina voor Andreas Vesalius, De humani corpo. 1555, RP-P-2016-1796. IdentificatieTitel(s): Anatomisch theater. Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica in 1543.
- - Iron artificial arm, Europe, 1560-1600. The left forearm and hand of this prosthetic arm are fully articulated. Gotz von Berlichingen was a sixteenth century German knight whose prosthetic iron hands survive.
- - Hunting trousse, England, 1560-1580. The hunting trousse contains all the instruments needed by a hunter to dismember and prepare a deer. Surgical instrument and appliance trade catalogues are a major and under-used visual record of what was actually made and sold, as against what was written about.
- - Iron artificial arm, 1560-1600.. From the original description of the Science Museum London: “Artificial iron arm, once thought to have been owned by Götz von Berlichingen (1480-1562), the German knight and adventurer who served with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V against the Turks. Gotz von Berlichingen was a sixteenth century German knight whose prosthetic iron hands survive.
- - A parchment-maker smoothing an animal hide on a stretcher. Woodcut by J. Amman... "Der Permennter". Evacuation as a system, rather than any single device, is arguably war's greatest contribution to this field, and it begins with Larrey's flying ambulances.
- - Articulated manikin, iron, used to teach bone-setting etcete. Bonesetters were unlicensed, frequently hereditary practitioners of manipulation who persisted alongside and in competition with the medical profession into the twentieth century, and in some regions to the present.
- - A surgeon and two assistants using pulleys and ropes to aid traction for manipulating the body of a male patient. Woodcut, 1575.
- - Bow frame amputation saw, Europe, 1575-1585. This amputation saw has an elaborate handle design which ends in a griffins head the griffin being a mythological creature which has the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. Amputation saws are the emblematic instrument of pre-anaesthetic surgery.
- - Illustration of artificial limbs. Photograph of an illustration of an artifical hand and arm. State programmes to supply artificial limbs to veterans, from the American Civil War onward, are a major driver of the prosthetics industry.
- - Portrait of Ambroise Pare (1510 - 1590), French surgeon
- - Portrait of Ambroise Pare (1510 - 1590), French surgeon Wellcome V0004474EL. Portrait of Ambroise Pare [1510 - 1590], French surgeon Forestier. Ambroise Pare revived the ligature of arteries in amputation in place of hot cautery.
- - Illustration of surgical instruments, 1597. Woodcut illustration from Tagliacozzi, Gaspare: De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem, libri duo, Venetiis : Apud Gasparem Bindonum juniorem, 1597. Surgical instrument and appliance trade catalogues are a major and under-used visual record of what was actually made and sold, as against what was written about.
- - Instruments illustration, 17th century
- - Tashrih-e Mansuri (Mansur's Anatomy), Mansur b. Iliyas (d. 1420s), Iran, mid 17th century AD, ink and watercolor on paper - Aga Khan Museum - Toronto, Canada. Exhibit in the Aga Khan Museum - Toronto, Canada. The Tashrih-i Mansuri, the anatomy of Mansur ibn Ilyas, is a Persian illustrated anatomical treatise of the late fourteenth century whose full-page skeletal and vascular figures were copied for centuries.
- - Catalogue of the Society of Apothecaries, London : who have been examined, and are by act of Parliament exempted from all Parish, Ward and Leet offices, and from serving on juries : incorporated 1617. .. / Frederick Kanmacher. List of members (mostly in London), dated 28 September 1809. Long wards of children in frames are the characteristic institutional image of orthopedics for the first two thirds of the twentieth century, when the caseload was polio and skeletal tuberculosis.
- - A man in ragged clothes walking with two crutches and a wooden leg. Etching by Jan Georg van der Vliet, c. 1632.
- - Spiegel: <i>Tabulae anatomicae LXXXIIX</i>, 1632: title page. Spiegel: Tabulae anatomicae LXXXIIX, 1632: title page. Engraving featuring illustration's related to Vesalius' De Fabrica, 1543 published as the title page to Spiegel, Adriaan van: De humani corporis fabrica libri decem, also known as Tabulae anatomicae LXXXIIX, Francofurti : Impensis & Caelo Matthaei Meriani, 1632. Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica in 1543.
- - Set of trephination Instruments, including the trephine designed by John Woodall. Engraving published in Woodall, John: The surgeons mate or military and domestique surgery, London : Printed by Rob. Trepanation, the cutting of an opening in the skull, is among the oldest operations for which there is physical evidence, and trepanned skulls with healed margins survive in museum collections worldwide, showing that people lived afterwards.
- - Woodall: <i>The Surgeon's mate</i>, 1639: title page. Woodall: The Surgeon's mate, 1639: title page. Title page to Woodall, John: The surgeons mate or military and domestique surgery, London : Printed by Rob. Nineteenth and early twentieth century operative atlases are heavily digitised and are literally instructional documents.
- - Portrait of Giovanni Girolamo Bronziero (Bronzerius), 1640. Bronzerius practised medicine in various cities within Venetian territories, ending in Belluno, where he died. Galen, physician to gladiators at Pergamon before moving to Rome, interpreted and transmitted the Hippocratic material.
…and 897 more moments.
Full text archive: /loreline-text/orthopedics.md
