Even though I have been living in New England for the past couple of years, I always log on to the Los Angeles Times for the West Coast news (as much as I think the LAT is not a great paper for such a great city, but that is a different post for a different blog.) This morning when I logged in I was saddened, but also brightened, to see a prominent obituary for Dr. Jacqueline Perry, an innovator in the field of orthopedics, specifically for the disabled. It's kind of a funny time to see this, because a lot has been happening for me personally which makes this loss especially poignant. Without going into too much detail, I will say that my mother suffers from ongoing spinal degeneration caused by spina bifida, which has always figured largely in our home life and also figured prominently in my own interests and career goals. Less personally, I also want to recommend the Sharon Lockhart exhibition "with" choreographer and biomechanic theorist Noa Eshkol at the Jewish Museum in New York. Sharon is an artist I used to support closely in my work in the art world, and I always really loved the Noa Eshkol film as it was being conceptualized and produced.
Our own mobility, and the miracle of the mechanics of our bodies that make it possible for us to walk, sleep, run marathons and win sports championships is rarely appreciated until we no longer enjoy its full benefits. Dr. Perry, sometimes referred to as the "Grand Dame of Orthopedics," dedicated her life's work to increasing mobility for people who had lost it or never enjoyed it's poetry. In her LAT obit, she is quoted saying "most doctors go into medicine to save lives. I am more interested in getting handicapped persons functioning again."
Dr. Perry made all kinds of amazing contributions to orthopedics, while also teaching as a professor of surgery at USC through the 1990s. (She was born in 1919, and was still working right up to her death, despite struggling with Parkinson's.) She invented the immobilization halo with Dr. Vernon Nickel, and did ground-breaking work with patients suffering from post-polio syndrome, decades after she had operated on them during the Polio epidemic to help them regain ambulatory ability. She co-wrote the definitive textbook on the human gait with Dr. Judith Burnfield in the 70s, and it remains a pillar of orthopedics even today.
Some other cool facts about Dr. Perry include:
-she reported once that she was so sure she wanted to be a doctor, even at age ten, that she would spend hours in the LA Library reading medical books.
-she coined the term "scaption," short for scapular plane elevation, to help her friend and colleague keep a lecture short enough for a conference.
-Dr. Perry was first a certified physical therapist, and didn't finish medical school until she was 29 or 30.
-Even after suffering a blockage in her brain making her unable to perform surgery, Dr. Perry continued to make huge contributions to her own field. I find it especially poetic that she would not be deterred by her own handicap in treating the handicaps of others.
-After her brain injury, Dr. Perry did most of her work at the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, a pioneer center for seeking new independence for folks with spinal cord or other neurological disorders or injuries.
-She was the first female orthopedic surgeon to graduation from UCSF and one of the first ten women to ever be certified by the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery.
-She was LA Times Woman of the Year in Science in 1959
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