Orthopaedic Surgery in World War II: Military and Medical Role of Northern Ireland

Belfast, Boston Massachusetts, Oswestry Shropshire and Oxford were the sites of publications on the regionalisation of Orthopaedic Surgery centres which have led to our present trauma centres. Professors Andrew Fullerton and Thomas Sinclair of Queen’s Belfast were under the Allied Command of Sir Alfred Keough, head of the RAMC who appointed Robert Jones of Oswestry as Commander of Allied Orthopaedics for World War I. Both Jones and Keough established orthopaedic regional centres and orthopaedic hospitals in England, France and Scotland. In total, they comprised 30,000 beds. Jones also treated as patients and trained as surgeons: Harry Platt, Gathorne Robert Girdlestone, Henry Osmond Clark and Reginald Watson-Jones, who were later to become prominent consulting professorial orthopaedic surgeons.