bone cement. This blueprint for joint replacement was drafted by Sir John
Charnley.
Lancashire County lies in the northwest of England, and at one time was
the world’s most important industrial and commercial center and the locus
of international capitalism. Lancashire’s main centers are Liverpool and
the world’s first industrialized city, Manchester. Although an ancient
Roman fortification site, Manchester came to prominence following
completion of canals and river improvements that facilitated transport of
coal and processed cotton from the surrounding countryside and shipping
to the River Mersey, Liverpool, and the world. The Industrial Revolution
started circa 1780, and although cotton has never been grown in England,
by the 1830s, Lancashire was responsible for almost all of the world’s
cotton processing. The international influence exerted by Lancastrians
would wane as the rest of the world emulated their steam engines, canals,
factories, and trading centers, but arguably the most important Lancashire
man of the last one hundred years came from the small town of Bury,
outside Manchester.
John Charnley was born 1911 to a chemist father and nurse mother, and
from a young age was noted to have a mechanical aptitude, building scale
sailboats and tinkering with engines. John’s sister would attend
Cambridge, but he would go straight to medical school in Manchester after
matriculating from the Bury Grammar School, winning science prizes and
achieving high grades. It seems that Charnley was destined for life as a
surgeon, even sitting for the Royal College of Surgeons of England
examination while still a medical student, which he easily passed.
Charnley graduated MB, ChB (Latin: Medicinae Baccalaureus,
Baccalaureus Chirurgiae, equivalent to the American MD degree) as a
twenty-four-year-old in 1935. He began a career as a surgeon, working in
London and later, back in Manchester, under the guidance of the esteemed
Henry Platt, one of the early English orthopedic pioneers. His future career
plans were shattered with the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, and
he was enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) on May 1,
- At the same time German forces were sweeping across northern
Europe (occupying Holland, Belgium, and France), Charnley was posted to
Dover, across the English Channel from Dunkirk. He made multiple trips
across the Channel to evacuate and care for the wounded, his life in grave
danger during the miraculous evacuation of 370,000 troops from the