Follow-Up Study of the Use of Refrigerated Homogenous Bone Transplants in Orthopaedic Operations

Philip Duncan Wilson was born in Columbus, Ohio. His father was a family physician who held the Chair of Obstetrics in the Sterling Medical School [1]. The young Philip graduated from Harvard College in 1909 and then served as President of his graduating class at Harvard Medical School. He spent two years as a surgical intern at MGH, after which he returned to Columbus to practice. During WWI he was invited back to Boston to join the Harvard Unit under Harvey Cushing, and served with that unit when it was housed in the Lycée Pasteur. (The members of that unit included Marius Smith-Petersen, who also spent many years at the Massachusetts General Hospital and also became AAOS President.) He rejoined MGH on the staff in 1919. In 1925 he published an influential monograph with W.A. Cochrane (formerly of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary), entitled, “Fractures and Dislocations” [5].

Toward the end of his years in Boston he helped found the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. In 1934 he was appointed as Surgeon-in-Chief at the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled in New York City. Dr. Wilson was active in many organizations, and reorganized and renamed the hospital he served (Hospital for Special Surgery), oversaw the building of a new hospital at its current site on the Cornell University medical campus, and raised money for a large research building. His zest inspired generations, and he was known for his gracious hospitality.

Dr. Wilson was one of three of the first fifteen Presidents (the others being Drs. John C. Wilson, Sr. and Melvin Henderson) whose son (Dr. Philip D. Wilson, Jr.) succeeded him as a President of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

Dr. Wilson had a long interest in bone grafting and wrote numerous research papers, a few of which are referenced here [2–4]. In the article reprinted in this issue [3], he described the rapid increase in use of a bone bank he developed at the Hospital for Special Surgery in 1946: 19 operations using grafts in 1946, 48 in 1947, 106 in 1948, 134 in 1949, and 259 in 1950. He describes his animal experiments with autogenous grafts in which grafts rapidly incorporated. He further describes biopsies of previously implanted autogenous and homogenous bone transplants in patients undergoing serial fusions for scoliosis. The pathologist (Dr. Milton Helpern) commented they found “...no evidence that the cells in the bone transplants survived...” Autogenous grafts, his evidence suggested, incorporated more rapidly that homogenous grafts, but “...in the end the results are the same.” His followup studies suggested successful incorporation of graft in 210 of 248 cases.