Lawrence Bruce Robertson was a Canadian surgeon who developed methods for and promoted the use of blood transfusions in battlefield surgery during World War I. [1]
Robertson studied medicine at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1909. He interned at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. [2]
Robertson engaged in post-graduate training in Boston and New York, where he studied methods of blood transfusion at Bellevue Hospital, [3] during a time when the process was not widely accepted for use in surgery. He returned to Canada in 1913, and worked at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where he introduced the processes he had learned to other physicians. With the advent of war, Robertson enlisted in the armed forces in 1914.
In October 1915, Robertson used the syringe method of transfusion which he had learned in New York to perform a transfusion, providing blood to a patient suffering from shrapnel wounds. After four more successful transfusions over several months, he reported his results to Sir Walter Morley Fletcher, director of the Medical Research Committee. [4] [5] In 1916 he wrote an article for the British Medical Journal detailing his results, titled "The Transfusion of Whole Blood: A Suggestion for More Frequent Employment in War Surgery". [6] This, along with improvements in the process developed by British physician Edward William Archibald, persuaded the British authorities to accept the practice of blood transfusion. In 1917 Robertson set up blood transfusion apparatus at Nomber 2 Casualty Clearing Station in France. [4] [7]
Following the war, Robertson returned to Toronto. In 1920, he was an orthopedic surgeon at Davisville Military Hospital. [8]
Robertson died of pneumonia in 1923 at the age of 38. [9]
Robertson was married to Enid Gordon (née Finley) Graham, a massage/physical therapist. The couple had two children. [9]
Blood transfusion is the process of transferring blood products into a person's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used for various medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood. Early transfusions used whole blood, but modern medical practice commonly uses only components of the blood, such as red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, platelets, and other clotting factors.
Henry Norman Bethune was a Canadian thoracic surgeon, early advocate of socialized medicine, and member of the Communist Party of Canada. Bethune came to international prominence first for his service as a frontline trauma surgeon supporting the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, and later supporting the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Bethune helped bring modern medicine to rural China, treating both sick villagers and wounded soldiers.
Bloodless surgery is a non-invasive surgical method developed by orthopedic surgeon, Adolf Lorenz, who was known as "the bloodless surgeon of Vienna". His medical practice was a consequence of his severe allergy to carbolic acid routinely used in operating rooms of the era. His condition forced him to become a "dry surgeon". Contemporary usage of the term refers to both invasive and noninvasive medical techniques and protocols. The expression does not mean surgery that makes no use of blood or blood transfusion. Rather, it refers to surgery performed without transfusion of allogeneic blood. Champions of bloodless surgery do, however, transfuse products made from allogeneic blood and they also make use of pre-donated blood for autologous transfusion. Interest in bloodless surgery has arisen for several reasons. Jehovah's Witnesses reject blood transfusions on religious grounds; others may be concerned about bloodborne diseases, such as hepatitis and AIDS.
Michael Ellis DeBakey was an American general and cardiovascular surgeon, scientist and medical educator who became Chairman of the Department of Surgery, President, and Chancellor of Baylor College of Medicine at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. His career spanned nearly eight decades.
A blood bank is a center where blood gathered as a result of blood donation is stored and preserved for later use in blood transfusion. The term "blood bank" typically refers to a department of a hospital usually within a clinical pathology laboratory where the storage of blood product occurs and where pre-transfusion and blood compatibility testing is performed. However, it sometimes refers to a collection center, and some hospitals also perform collection. Blood banking includes tasks related to blood collection, processing, testing, separation, and storage.
Orthopedic surgery or orthopedics is the branch of surgery concerned with conditions involving the musculoskeletal system. Orthopedic surgeons use both surgical and nonsurgical means to treat musculoskeletal trauma, spine diseases, sports injuries, degenerative diseases, infections, tumors, and congenital disorders.
In the Middle Ages, the medicine of Western Europe was composed of a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Medieval medicine is widely misunderstood, thought of as a uniform attitude composed of placing hopes in the church and God to heal all sicknesses, while sickness itself exists as a product of destiny, sin, and astral influences as physical causes. On the other hand, medieval medicine, especially in the second half of the medieval period, became a formal body of theoretical knowledge and was institutionalized in the universities. Medieval medicine attributed illnesses, and disease, not to sinful behaviour, but to natural causes, and sin was connected to illness only in a more general sense of the view that disease manifested in humanity as a result of its fallen state from God. Medieval medicine also recognized that illnesses spread from person to person, that certain lifestyles may cause ill health, and some people have a greater predisposition towards bad health than others.
George Washington Crile was an American surgeon. Crile is now formally recognized as the first surgeon to have succeeded in a direct blood transfusion. He contributed to other procedures, such as neck dissection. Crile designed a small hemostatic forceps which bears his name; the Crile mosquito clamp. He also described a technique for using opioids, regional anesthesia and general anesthesia which is a concept known as balanced anesthesia. He is also known for co-founding the Cleveland Clinic in 1921.
The Temerty Faculty of Medicine is the medical school of the University of Toronto. Founded in 1843, the faculty is based in Downtown Toronto and is one of Canada's oldest institutions of medical studies, being known for the discovery of insulin, stem cells and the site of the first single and double lung transplants in the world.
The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons is the medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.
William Thornton Mustard was a Canadian physician and cardiac surgeon. In 1949, he was one of the first to perform open-heart surgery using a mechanical heart pump and biological lung on a dog at the Banting Institute. He developed two operations named for him: the "Mustard operation" in orthopedics used to help hip use in people with polio and the "Mustard cardiovascular procedure" used to help correct heart problems in "blue babies," which has saved thousands of children worldwide. He was also the first to treat ALCAPA with a left carotid artery end to end anastamosis in 1953.
William Stewart Halsted, M.D. was an American surgeon who emphasized strict aseptic technique during surgical procedures, was an early champion of newly discovered anesthetics, and introduced several new operations, including the radical mastectomy for breast cancer. Along with William Osler, Howard Atwood Kelly and William H. Welch, Halsted was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. His operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital is in Ward G, and was described as a small room where medical discoveries and miracles took place. According to an intern who once worked in Halsted's operating room, Halsted had unique techniques, operated on the patients with great confidence and often had perfect results which astonished the interns.
In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as physicians before specializing in surgery. There are also surgeons in podiatry, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. It is estimated that surgeons perform over 300 million surgical procedures globally each year.
The state of medical knowledge at the time of the Civil War was extremely primitive. Doctors did not understand infection, and did little to prevent it. It was a time before antiseptics, and a time when there was no attempt to maintain sterility during surgery. No antibiotics were available, and minor wounds could easily become infected, and hence fatal. While the typical soldier was at risk of being hit by rifle or artillery fire, he faced an even greater risk of dying from disease.
Edward William Archibald was a Canadian surgeon. Archibald was born in Montreal, Quebec, and received his initial education in Grenoble, France. Upon returning to Canada, he attended McGill University, receiving his Doctor of Medicine there in 1896. Archibald became interested in the specialist field of surgery, and began an apprenticeship at Royal Victoria Hospital. After a year in Europe studying under two well known physicians, the young surgeon was appointed to the staff of the Royal Victoria Hospital's Department of Surgical Pathology. However, Archibald became ill with tuberculosis, and moved to New York City for treatment. Upon his recovery, the surgeon returned to Royal Victoria Hospital. There, he developed what he had learned in Europe, and came to be dubbed Canada's first neurosurgeon.
James Rutka is a Canadian neurosurgeon from Toronto, Canada. Rutka served as RS McLaughlin Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto from 2011 – 2022. He subspecializes in pediatric neurosurgery at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), and is a Senior Scientist in the Research Institute at SickKids. His main clinical interests include the neurosurgical treatment of children with brain tumours and epilepsy. His research interests lie in the molecular biology of human brain tumours – specifically in the determination of the mechanisms by which brain tumours grow and invade. He is the Director of the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre at SickKids, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neurosurgery.
William Edward Gallie was a Canadian medical educator and orthopedic surgeon.
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Prof George Henry Edington FRSE FRCS DL JP TD (1870-1943) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist and medical author who served as President of both the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society and the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow 1928 to 1940. He was Honorary Physician to King George V from 1922 to 1927.