Clinical and Experimental Observations with Regard to the Injection of Certain Agents (Pregl’s Solution) into Chronic Arthritic Joints

J.E.M. (Tommy) Thomson was born in Los Angeles, California in 1989, of “pious and scholarly” parents with “evangelistic...interests” [3]. His grandfather had been a missionary bishop in the Methodist Church. He attended Evanston Academy and then Northwestern University. While he began his medical studies at Texas Christian College, he completed his medical education at Rush Medical College in 1915. He took an internship in Chicago, where his mentors reportedly included Drs. Edwin Ryerson (first President of the AAOS), John Ridlon, and Dallas Phemister [3]. In 1916 he began medical practice with H. Winnett Orr in Lincoln, Nebraska. During WW I he served in the University of Nebraska Overseas Base Hospital No. 49. He returned to practice after the war in 1919 and remained in Lincoln during his professional life. In addition to his professional interests, he and his wife shared an interest in cattle breeding and for a while had extensive ranching interests in Nebraska. The last few years of his life were spent in semiretirement in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Dr. Thomson traveled widely and made many friends worldwide. In 1955 he took a trip around the world but he had many other travels and was an honorary member of a number of foreign orthopaedic societies including the Czechoslovakian Orthopaedic Society, The Polish Orthopaedic and Trauma Society, the Finnish Orthopaedic Association, and the Latin American Society of Orthopaedics and Traumatology. Dr. Thomson traveled to all continents except Australia. He was a founding member of the Orthopaedic Research society. As with a number of the early offices of the AAOS, Dr. Thomson was active in the American Orthopaedic Association and the Clinical Orthopaedic Society and served as President of the latter in 1936. The Instructional Course Lectures were evidently his “brainchild” [3]. The record is unclear of the beginnings, although they evidently arose out of motion picture exhibits. What is clear is the first Instructional Course Lectures were presented in 1942 and published in 1943 with Dr. Thomson as editor. At the 1946 annual meeting, Dr. Thomson was selected to “establish and monitor the Instructional Course Lectures” [2]. He continued to serve as editor of the published Instructional Course Lectures until 1948. One account suggests the idea of a central office was his, and that he personally furnished a temporary central office in Lincoln until permanent headquarters could be established [1]. He was a man of great energy and bearing. In his Presidential Lecture he commented, “There is an old saying – you can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. I sometimes feel that in our post-war fervor, in behalf of the veterans separated from military service, we tend to encourage some conscientious young men to enter a field of training for which they are totally unsuited.” Despite infirmities in his last years (he had bilateral hip prostheses), he continued to be active, and died while giving lectures at the University of Kansas (“as he would have wished ‘with his boots on.’” [3]).

The article we reprint here reflects Thomson’s innovative thinking. Surgical alternatives for chronic arthritis were not well developed in 1932 and Thomson explored a method described by Pregl of Vienna [4]. Pregl injected a “secret preparation” that was a “non-irritating, non-staining, watery solution of free and combined iodine with certain idodides.” Thomson described his own similar solution, and used two to five injections spaced five to seven days apart. He reported the results in 15 patients, most with undefined or posttraumatic arthritis, but one with gonorrheal and one with likely acute joint sepsis, and two with bursitis (olecranon and prepatellar). He further produced experimental arthritis in four rabbits by injection of microbes or a dilute carbolic acid solution. Two to four weeks later, he injected Pregl’s solution and noted resolution. His observations, he concluded, warranted “further investigation and a more general use of Pregl’s solution in treating chronic effusion of arthritic and traumatized joints.”