Fractures of the Femur. End Results*

Melvin Starkey Henderson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and received his early schooling there and in Winnipeg, Manitoba [4]. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Toronto. He then interned in the City and County Hospital in his home town of St. Paul, and in 1907 went to work as an assistant with the founders of the recently formed Mayo Clinic, William James and Charles Horace Mayo. To further his training and evidently at the suggestion of the Mayo brothers, in 1911 Dr. Henderson went abroad to work under Sir Robert Jones in Liverpool and then Sir Harold Stiles in Edinburgh. He returned to organize and direct the section of orthopaedic surgery at the Mayo Clinic and spent his entire professional career there.

Dr. Henderson was involved in many national and international organizations, and was a founder and first President of the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgeons when it was established at the Kahler Hotel in Rochester, Minnesota, on June 5, 1934, after several previous organizational meetings [5]. Wickstrom [5], describing the organization of the Board, commented, “After all, in the opinion of the East coast establishment, Dr. Henderson (who was born in St. Paul, was educated in Canada, and had his beginning with the Mayo brothers as a clinical assistant riding a bicycle around Rochester, making house calls on the Mayo brothers’ patients) was a mere upstart.” However, at the time Dr. Henderson was 50 years old and had been President of the American Orthopaedic Association and Clinical Orthopaedic Society, as well as prominent in the American Medical Association and other organizations. Dr. Henderson was one of three of the first 15 AAOS Presidents (the other two being Drs. Philip D. Wilson and John C. Wilson, Sr.) who had a son who succeeded him as President. He was greatly respected for his organizational abilities, particularly at the Board, whose objectives were uncertain in the beginning and required sage guidance [5].

We reproduce here an article in which Dr. Henderson reviewed 222 consecutive cases of femur fractures, 165 of which had been referred late because of complications of fractures treated elsewhere (clearly, by 1921, the Mayo Clinic was a referral source for others) [2]. Followup could not have been easy at a time when patients often came from a distance and travel was difficult, but it was described when available and in 40 of the 57 recent fractures, Henderson reported 87.5% were “cured.” Of the 165 old fractures, he was able to trace 143 (87%), a remarkable figure even today. He reported 90% of the femoral neck fractures were cured by various sorts of nonsurgical (6 patients) or surgical reconstructive (39 patients) means; 85% of the femoral shaft fractures were cured by either nonoperative (29 patients) or operative (69 patients) means. While he did not use the sort of outcomes we use today (the earliest orthopaedic outcome instruments were not introduced for four more decades: by Carroll B. Larson in 1963 [3] and William H. Harris in 1969 [1]), we can only presume Henderson meant union was achieved when patients were “cured” since nonunion or malunion would not have likely produced good results. That being the case, his rate of union was remarkable and would be enviable today in these sometimes difficult situations, attesting to his understanding of the individual situations and his skills.