50 Years Ago in CORR: A New Method of Pelvic Fixation William Johnson MD Clin Orthop. 1958;11:194–201

Excerpt

Few surgical treatment concepts are truly new. The concept of external fixation by pins and various metal devices dates at least to the late 1800s. Parkhill [3] in 1898 described a set of devices he had used for some years to treat fresh fractures of the long bones, nonunions, and malunions. A few years later, Lambotte independently described a conceptually similar approach [2]. These approaches did not become widespread, perhaps owing to the designs (that of Parkhill, for example, was applied quite close to the fracture with only two pins on either side; perhaps not the most advantageous mechanical design), or metals (stainless steel had not yet been discovered), or because surgeons tended to use those methods with which they were familiar. For whatever reasons, external fixators did not become widely used for long bone fractures in Europe and North America until the 1970s. …