Johns Hopkins, and cardiothoracic surgeons embrace Minnesota,
Cleveland, Philadelphia, Rochester, and Houston as seats of their
profession, and so forth. Each one of these institutions was led by a
visionary surgeon who, more often than not, was from a small town and
who grew up working with his hands. Return to the pictures of Virgil
Gibney and Lewis Sayre, the American giants of orthopedics, and consider
that both of them were raised in the Lexington, Kentucky, area. Look
closer at Dr. Gibney’s right hand—he is missing two fingers from trauma
suffered as an eleven-year-old.
There seems to be a secret behind being a dark horse among elite peers,
a prototypical loner with the need to prove oneself, a practiced dexterity
and a connection with manual work and innovative insight. Charlie Neer
was all these things (although not a hobbyist or tinkerer, he was a
horseman and tennis player). He changed the world of shoulder surgery by
innovating the first shoulder replacement and refining the diagnosis and
management of several shoulder conditions. The first post-residency
fellowship in shoulder surgery was with him at Columbia University, and
the fellows from that program are among the most famous shoulder
surgeons who have ever lived. Dr. Neer was the founding president of the
American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons group, and was a force behind the
establishment of the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. All of this
from a boy from Vinita, Oklahoma.
In the midst of the Normandy invasion, Charlie Neer was assigned,
along with another medical “volunteer,” to perform medical triage aboard
a spartan hospital ship in the English Channel. Considered “expendable”
because they were single, Neer and his colleague reached the ship by PT
boat in rough seas, and quickly began assessing the battle injuries among
the brave troops that landed on the French coastline. Charlie heard men
crying out in the inky darkness, “Save me!” and “Help me!”—these
entreaties would haunt Charlie for the rest of his life, with his patients’
survival precariously hanging in the balance on converted warships,
bobbing in murky waters.
Charlie Neer, now a twenty-six-year-old, would make land on D-Day
“Plus 6,” June 12, 1944. His army regiment established field hospitals in
succession as the Allied forces made their way south and east, eventually
establishing a more permanent venue in a schoolhouse in Arques-la-
Bataille, a small village a few miles from the coastal village of Dieppe.
marcin
(Marcin)
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