Following the first public demonstration of surgical anesthesia in the
Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846, Koch’s
experiments to prove that bacteria were real, and the development of
antisepsis by Lister, surgery became vastly safer. Coupled with the
introduction of antibiotics during World War II, and the transition of
medicine from a merely observational science to an investigational one,
sports medicine was finally able to alter the lives of athletes.
Los Angeles was doubling in size every decade for a century up till the
1950s. As transcontinental travel was becoming more practical, the
Cleveland Rams shockingly celebrated their 1946 NFL championship by
moving to Los Angeles, the first move west by any major sports team.
Waiting for the Rams was a gregarious orthopedic surgeon with a tragic
medical secret.
Robert Kerlan was the son of a general practitioner in the small town of
Aitkin, Minnesota, about an hour’s drive west of Duluth. An all-star high
school athlete, Kerlan first arrived in Los Angeles as a sixteen-year-old to
play basketball at the University of California in Los Angeles. After one
year at UCLA, he transferred to USC, matriculating both undergrad and
medical school. Like so many medical students with an athletic past, Bob
Kerlan gravitated toward orthopedics, and after finishing his surgical
training, became one of the earliest orthopedic surgeons who steadfastly
served as a team physician for professional sporting franchises. In Los
Angeles, he had the best seat in the house for every sporting event in the
booming fifties and sixties.
Dr. Kerlan was hired just the day before the opening day of baseball for
the new Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958. (Having won the World Series in
1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers broke fans’ hearts and ventured west prior to
the 1958 season, as did the New York baseball Giants.) He had volunteered
for a minor league baseball team for a few years, but this was different.
The Los Angeles Dodgers became a dominant team for a decade, and their
bold venture signaled the emergence of sports as big business. Dr. Kerlan’s
good fortune overshadowed the fact that he was stricken with ankylosing
spondylitis.
Ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory condition of the spinal
column, propels its victims into a forward thrust, turning the flexible
human spine into one long, fused, rigid piece of ratcheted bamboo. Slowly,
painfully, the patient is turned into a spectacle. Once fully entombed, the
marcin
(Marcin)
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