The Classic

George Perkins (Fig. 1), a Londoner, was educated at Oxford and at St. Thomas's Hospital, an institution he was associated with almost continuously for the rest of his life. After qualifying in 1916, he joined the army and was sent to East Africa, where, before the campaign was over, he became a German prisoner of war. After World War I, he spent short periods at the Military Orthopaedic Hospital, Shepherds Bush, and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital before settling in at St. Thomas. There he was an essential element in the development of the orthopedic department. He had only a minor role in World War II because of ill health. However, in 1946, he became head of the orthopedic department of St. Thomas and two years later, the first Professor of Surgery at that hospital. From that time until his retirement, he was a tireless advocate for the functional treatment of fractures and an early exponent of aggressive internal fixation. This position put him in opposition to the practice of his contemporaries such as Reginal Waston-Jones. He was active in the affairs of the British Orthopaedic Association and, as the president of this society in 1946, began the process that resulted in the British volume of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. This action has permitted the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery to become a major orthopedic journal for the English-speaking world. The following paper was written when Perkins was only 36 years old and just beginning to differentiate into an orthopedic specialist. It is interesting that this paper, one of his earliest publications, is the one which perpetuates his name in the practice of orthopedics and radiology (i.e., “Perkins's Line”). LEONARD F. PELTIER, M.D., PH.D.