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AAOS Celebrates Its
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American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery Celebrates its 75th Anniversary

By James J. Hamilton, M.D.

The recent AAOS meeting in San Francisco celebrated its 75th Anniversary. I and Dr. Robert Bucholz had the pleasure serving as the co-chairs for the celebratory events. We worked over the past four years to accomplish several goals for this celebration. First, we worked to publish a “coffee-table” type book that could be used in the orthopaedic surgeon’s waiting room that illustrated how orthopaedic surgery impacted the lives of several patients. The book “Moving Stories; Seventy-Fives years of Orthopaedic Surgery” as well as a 54 minute picture of these stories on a DVD is free to all academy members by request at pemr@aaos.org.  Our second project was to write and publish a scientific history of orthopaedic surgery in the United States since 1900. Henry Schrek was chosen to author “Getting it Straight: a History of American Orthopaedics” and this book is available for $75 for AAOS members through Customer Service at the Academy. These works are very well done and deserve to be in every orthopaedic surgeon’s library.

In an effort to preserve the living history of the Academy, we then developed a digital timeline which now contains over 2000 items and includes digital video clips of orthopaedic events and personalities. This can be viewed at www.aaos75th.org/timeline. This is a wonderful source for background material for a talk or presentation you may have to give. There are over 100 interviews of notable orthopaedic surgeons and Academy Presidents also recorded on the Anniversary website.

For the actual meeting we organized the second “e-motions art show.”  There were two hundred art pieces selected from over 750 submissions. The requirement was that the artist who had to be an orthopaedic surgeon or patient needed to express how orthopaedic surgery impacted their lives. The artists ranged from age 4 to the 80’s. We were able to display some of Frank Netter’s original art. After the Academy, the art show will move to the Chicago Cultural Center where it will be on display starting April 16th for three months.

I submitted “Miracle Manny,” a skeleton with 73 orthopaedic implants in place that had a retail value of over $175,000. We had supplied 8000 handouts for the five days and ran out after two days. Every time I passed it, there were people lined up to have their picture taken with it.

Along with the art display, we displayed historic orthopaedic items such as an ivory handled amputation set from the civil war, a pristine acrylic Judet prosthesis with original packaging, ivory bone screws, historic books and instruments.

Finally a commemorative art piece was commissioned for the Academy. This is a “shadow box” that is 6 feet long and four feet tall that displays the Academy as “Andre’s Tree.”  The branches are all the sub-specialties of orthopaedics with instruments, implants and mementos. The roots of the tree are miniaturized versions of various pictures, document, books and publications of the Academy.

All-in-all it was a wonderful celebration of the progress orthopaedic surgery has made in the United states with the AAOS becoming the premier orthopaedic association in the world. I hope you all take advantage of the material we prepared. We had a lot of fun putting it together and I hope it will provide you great pride in your Academy.