THIRTEEN
Device Clearance
I am still acclimating to the Greenwich Mean Time zone, having arrived in
London only two days ago. After a short hackney cab ride from my flat to
the Euston Station, it was a quick two-hour high-speed train ride on one of
the busiest rail routes in Europe, connecting London to Manchester
Piccadilly station. A connection in Manchester placed me on a spoke of
the TransPennine Express to the town of Wigan, where I hailed a taxi to
travel through the Lancashire countryside to the parish of Wrightington.
The view out my taxi window was of gently rolling English farmland, with
hedgerows of compact bushes and gnarled trees separating newly tilled,
corrugated fields.
Wrightington’s pastoral setting does not evoke thoughts of world-class
medicine, but on the outskirts of town lies a hospital that has drawn me
here. My taxi whorls around the roundabout and coming into view is the
Wrightington hospital complex. The original estate, Wrightington Hall
(rebuilt in 1748), is composed of cream-colored stone, its stately manner
and imposing structure in keeping with its regional importance in former
days. The remaining buildings on the grounds are one or two stories tall,
and unlike the estate, are composed of red brick. My taxi comes to a stop
and my driver, a slim, older gentleman from Pakistan, tells me, “You know
they say this is a really important hospital in history, the place where joint
replacement surgery was invented.”
Getting out my wallet to pay my driver, I tell him, “That’s right. And it’s
why I’m here, to see where it all happened, and to pay my respects to the
memory of Sir John Charnley.”
A very old stone wall flanks a macadam parking lot, and on the other
side lies a one-story 1960s building, the famous Centre for Hip Surgery.
Hundreds of surgeons who have visited this mecca have stood in that