The Classic

Mr. Essex-Lopresti (Fig. 1) was trained at the London Hospital and qualified in 1937. After several resident appointments, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps serving as a surgical specialist in an airborne division. As a result of this experience, he was able to give a comprehensive report on the injuries associated with 20,777 parachute jumps made by men in the Sixth British Airborne Division, one of the first such reports. 1 A paper on the open wound in trauma followed.2 At the end of World War II, he went back to the Birmingham Accident Hospital where he reorganized the postgraduate training program. He was recognized as an outstanding young surgeon and was awarded a Hunterian Professorship. His Hunterian Lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on March 6, 1951 has been chosen as the Classic article for this Symposium. Although Essex-Lopresti is remembered eponymically for his cases of radial head fracture associated with distal radioulnar dislocations, i.e. Essex-Lopresti's fracture,3 his Classic for this Symposium is on fractures of the os calcis. Mr. Essex-Lopresti was a talented and energetic young surgeon whose death at the age of 35 cut short a promising career.