Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

J. William Littler, M.D., 1915 to 2005

2006; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 118; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/01.prs.0000244008.93389.0f

1529-4242

Joseph G. McCarthy,

Biomedical Ethics and Regulation

J. William Littler, M.D., member of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons and master hand surgeon, died in Providence, Rhode Island, on February 27, 2005, from injuries sustained in a fall. Bill was one of our last links to that generation of plastic surgeons who came of professional age during World War II. He was born to Southern parents in Manlius, New York, on October 7, 1915. He often spoke of the joys of growing up in small town America and the leisurely pace of life. He once told me that he was instinctively drawn to mechanical devices in his youth and particularly enjoyed taking apart and reassembling bicycles and other machines. He even built a model airplane that won a national competition. He was also recognized for his strong interest in art as a young boy, and encouraged by his artist mother, he began art classes at Syracuse University at the age of 8. Art was an important element throughout his life. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Duke University and spent his summer vacations working in a marine biology laboratory in South Carolina. His father encouraged a career in surgery because he felt it would finally force Bill “to finish what he started.” After a surgical internship and residency (as the Halsted Fellow) under the legendary Alfred Blalock at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he enrolled in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and became a member of the “greatest generation.” Soon after enlisting, however, he contracted rheumatic fever and was hospitalized in England in 1942 for 6 months. After his return to the United States and additional hospitalization, he was assigned to Cushing General Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he served for 2 years on the orthopedic, plastic surgery, and neurosurgery services. He developed one of the nine nationwide hand surgery services, with as many as 360 patients at any time, under the overall sponsorship of Sterling Bunnell. He volunteered as a civilian consultant to extend his duty for an additional 7 months after his official discharge, in order to complete the surgical reconstruction on many of his patients at the Valley Forge Army Hospital in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Here he again established a hand service and worked with future giants of plastic surgery, including Robert Chase, Earle Peacock, Michael Lewin, and Radford Tanzer. This service was one of the early prototypes of the modern concept of surgical “regionalization.” Already internationally recognized after his military service for his accomplishments in hand surgery, he had to make a decision as to which professional route he should take to become “boarded.” Fortunately for our specialty, he decided to become a plastic surgeon and did his residency at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center with Jerome P. Webster. One wonders whether hand surgery would have become a component of American plastic surgery if he had chosen otherwise. As an example of the flexibility of the pre-Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education era, Bill spent his mornings as a plastic surgery resident and then went downtown in the afternoons to Roosevelt Hospital, where he conducted a practice in hand surgery. He remained at Roosevelt Hospital as an attending plastic surgeon and eventually became head of the service. In 1951, he founded the hospital’s hand surgery unit, which attracted patients from around the world. Now known as the C. V. Starr Hand Surgery Center, it was one of the first services devoted to the comprehensive treatment of hand injuries. He also began his legendary hand surgery fellowship in 1952, and its graduates read like a roster of Who’s Who in American hand surgery. He was always fondly called “the professor” by his fellows. Bill was a gifted surgeon, technically adept, artistically creative, and uniquely innovative. A small sampling of his accomplishments include the neurovascular island flap for sensate coverage of the digits, reconstruction of the swan neck deformity, and the development of the technique of thumb pollicization and reconstruction of the basal joint of the thumb. Ever the artist, Bill’s sketches and drawings were everywhere–-in his office records, in his scientific papers, and on the napkins of his fellow diners, who were rewarded with a portrait of themselves after the bill had been settled. Bill’s impact on American hand surgery in the second half of the twentieth century is legendary. The graduates of his fellowship program achieved leadership positions around the country. He lectured at national and international meetings, and his upper extremity surgery chapters in the Converse series (1964 and 1977) were regarded as the bible of hand surgery. Bill and John Converse had a friendship that began shortly after World War II, when Converse had a minor automobile accident and avulsed part of the palmar surface of his left hand. There was only one person whom he would allow to do the operation, but that person was still a resident in plastic surgery at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Bill Littler. Their friendship matured over the years, and Converse regretted that he could not persuade him to join the faculty of the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery. Littler was also best man at Converse’s 1964 wedding. Littler was a founding member of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand and was its seventeenth president from 1962 to 1963. He was also a founding member of the New York Society for Surgery of the Hand and was its president in 1973. He is survived by a daughter, Anne, of Paradise Valley, Nevada, and a younger brother, Ted, of Providence. Bill Littler shall always be remembered as kind and ever gracious. There was never a more pleasant dinner companion. The conversation was always warm, international in flavor, and often based on his broad reading background. Many of us were honored by the portraits he sketched of us on linen napkins. He always arrived at the restaurant with a red carnation in his lapel, leather gloves clasped in his hands, and an engaging smile. In later years he used a walking stick, but again with that special Littler flair. Bill’s last attendance at the American Association of Plastic Surgeons meeting was in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2003. The residents who drove him by automobile from New York to Baltimore and back were enchanted by him. They enjoyed his stories and admired him for his professional achievements, but most of all they were charmed by his gracious demeanor. They recognized their time with Bill was a special one that they would cherish for the rest of their lives. Many of us in the American Association of Plastic Surgeons will be forever grateful that we had also shared special moments with him. We have lost a friend, and plastic surgery has lost one of its modern architects.Figure: Oil portrait of J. William Littler, M.D., by Richard Whitney ([email protected]). Commissioned by Roosevelt Hospital, New York, New York.