How the US Army Forged Hand Surgery

John C Dunn; Martha K Lenhart; James P Higgins; Leon J Nesti

doi:10.1016/j.jhsa.2019.10.008

How the US Army Forged Hand Surgery

J Hand Surg Am. 2020 Apr;45(4):354-357. doi: 10.1016/j.jhsa.2019.10.008. Epub 2019 Dec 5.

Authors

John C Dunn¹, Martha K Lenhart¹, James P Higgins², Leon J Nesti¹

Affiliations

¹ Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, MD.
² The Curtis National Hand Center, MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, Baltimore, MD. Electronic address: anne.mattson@medstar.net.

PMID: 31813587
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhsa.2019.10.008

Abstract

As the United States plunged into World War II, the surgeon general, Norman T. Kirk, scrambled to care for the complex hand injuries sustained in combat. To remedy this problem, Major General Kirk appointed Sterling Bunnell, a general surgeon and a World War I veteran with a keen interest in hand injuries, to serve as the consultant to the Secretary of War. Kirk and Bunnell formed 9 US military hand centers that treated 22,000 hand injuries in World War II. Bunnell and his pupils would later form the nucleus of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. Through Dr. Bunnell's expertise, skillful care, dedication to teaching, and love of country, US hand surgery was born.

Keywords: Fellowship training; hand surgery history; military surgery.

Publication types

Historical Article
Review

MeSH terms

Hand / surgery
Hand Injuries* / surgery
History, 20th Century
Humans
Military Personnel*
Specialties, Surgical*
United States