Acknowledgments
There are no eureka moments. At least that’s what we are supposed to
conclude in this post-modern world, but it simply cannot be true.
When I first starting dating Wendy—for better or worse—she quickly
realized that I am an inveterate storyteller, and it didn’t take long for her
to predict that I would one day be a writer. My three-decade detour in
science and surgery was preparation for this book, with countless hours in
the world’s greatest libraries and sleepless nights responding to editor’s
critiques when I was still in the business of cranking out research
publications in the orthopedic literature. Today, I only rarely conduct
scientific experimentation, but maintain a busy orthopedic practice,
specializing in shoulder and elbow surgery.
My eureka moment came one day in the shower. I had started this
project as an impulse to explain modern surgery to the general public and
to medical practitioners alike. I kept stumbling into intriguing stories of
the greats of surgery, realizing it was possible to link together their lives in
the assault against disease. As the warm shower water gushed over my
head early one morning, a thought occurred to me: we are in the midst of a
revolution.
Sometimes revolutions ignite with the overthrow of a government or
the invention of a machine, and there is no denying that you are drowning
in upheaval. Other times, it is not possible to detect that you are living in
transcendent times without someone pointing it out. I challenge you: name
more than a few people you know who have not had surgery. It’s almost
not possible. And if you’ve had surgery, you almost certainly have a
permanent man-made bit of material inside you—an impossibility back in
1941.
Thus, the implant revolution.