Ronald Lawrie Huckstep
Professor Ronald Lawrie Huckstep, CMG, FTSE, Hon MA, MD, FRACS, FRCS, FAOrthA
Orthopaedic Surgeon, Educator, Humanitarian
1926-2015
1926-Born in China, to missionary parents. At age 15, his family was arrested by the Japanese and placed in a Concentration Camp outside Shanghai, where he received his early medical education there. He presented his CV and was accepted into Cambridge Medical School.
Ron's work and life was of the The Heroic Age, an Age when men and women (think Virginia Apgar), dedicated themselves to the surgical care of patients way beyond what is or could be expected or dreamt of in in these days of Key Performance Indicators and "stake-holder" committee medicine.
1952 went to Kenya, studies studied typhoid and wrote the seminal textbook on it (Typhoid fever, 1962, received an MD for this).
1952-1960, Resident, Registrar and Chief Assistant, Middlesex, Royal National Orthopaedic and St. Bartholomews Hospitals London.1960-1971,Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Makerere University and University of East Africa, Kampala, Uganda.1971-1994-Foundation Professor & Head, Department of Traumatic & Orthopaedic Surgery and Chairman, School of Surgery The University of New South Wales.
They worked tirelessly, built huge departments, stretched the boundaries of medicine and surgery ( developed and invented the Huckstep Locking Nail for complex trauma, the Huckstep Hip, circlage clip, Huckstep ceramic knee, cannulated hip screws, ceramic spacers for tumour reconstructive work , the skelecast for fractures,appliances for the developing World incl a special lightweight wheelchair in Uganda in 1967), wrote textbooks, his in a style from Apley (the best selling and standard manual of trauma-the Simple Guide to Trauma, the 6th edition now being prepared, and the Simple Guide to Orthopaedics),developed the surgical treatment of primary bone tumours and fixation of metastatic bone fractures ( allowing such patients to end their days painfree and with dignity) and were early movers onto the net
1972-1994-,Chairman, Department of Traumatic & Orthopaedic Surgery and Director of Accident Services, Prince of Wales/Prince Henry Hospitals, Sydney.
1994- retired, Emeritus Professor of Orthopaedics, UNSW and Univ Sydney.
2007, established WorldOrtho. His missionary zeal continued with World Orthopaedic Concern. 22 years after his retirement most of his colleagues have still not caught up. As his registrars we never really thought we could "keep up" with his blistering pace.
No mortal could really. All this by one man, but not one ordinary man, but someone of the Heroic Age. Always a gentleman, witty, rarely feared, more beloved and held in awe.
I'm sitting at home writing the obituary he asked me to start 5 years ago. Ron was very well organized. I started it immediately in 2010, but Ron emailed in his imitable, clear, gentlemanly style," I would be most grateful if you would delay any preparation of the obituary until the need arises". I sms another Huckstepian registrar for a fact check, the reply within the minute, an efficiency the Prof would want.
All his medical students and registrars fondly recall working back to 10pm on Friday nights in his grand office in Prince of Wales Hospital working on his myriad research projects (the nearby General Surgical Department had long ago been relegated to nearby "cupboard" space). Sipping a little sake at 9pm.He was in his office the rest of the week until 7pm.
Many of the students later becoming orthopaedic surgeons, but at least two become neurosurgeons (one nervously asking if the Prof would be upset that he did not want to be an orthopod).
What an honour to be called a Huckstepian registrar or medical student. Our duties were to care for and keep track of his huge surgical practice, teach the students, sort his huge collection of sides, and to complete his sentences (so his mind could race away on endless further surgical innovations).
Also to pour the tea in his busy clinics when we sat for a break over tea and chicken sandwiches.
These registrars now run the show in Australia.
He had his detractors who were of lesser stature and significance. So did the famous 18th Century English Surgeon, John Hunter; the name of his detractor was Jesse Foot, who all but ruined him for 100 years until Hunter was re-interred in Westminster Abbey.
But no one ruined Ron, the man who survived Japanese concentration camps in China in the 1920s and then Idi Amin in Uganda, in the 1960s. Idi was then routinely rounding up ex patriates for death, Ron was tipped off by a theatre orderly as to the best time to escape; one day he slipped out of the airport with his family and a box of slides to later arrive in Sydney to take up the Chair of Orthopaedics at Prince of Wales, UNSW. When he arrived at Prince of Wales Hospital, he parked his old car in the Professor's car park, only to be told that was the Professors car park, not for the orderlies.
In later years Ron loved to drive his convertible, a British racing green Triumph Stag, plate number RLH 333, top down, across the harbour bridge on his way to work from the North Shore.
He was a great and zealous teacher, organized it around the Rule of 3, a simple system to organize the facts of life and organize medical knowledge. Surprising it seemed to work more often than not.
Salk and Sabin developed the polio vaccine, but it was Ron who developed and instigated the surgical care of polio victims in Uganda, The Pacific (one weekend there, it is said he did more than had been done in the previous 20yrs) and later Australia. His percutaneous technique for correcting gross deformities are still used today (with fancy MIS label).All this is documented in his classic text (Poliomyelitis, 1975) and enigmatic video (Poliomyelitis in Uganda), view it, it looks as if it was produced in a modern studio only yesterday).
Pope Paul V1 visited him in Africa s to see his work and he was later awarded the CMG for this work.
Later in Australia, he turned down an AO believing he was undeserving.
Fred Hollows, the famous eye surgeon, worked at Prince of Wales Hospital at the same time. Two giants of Australian Surgery-they shared the same alchemy. Fred was a tireless and rough diamond; also from a missionary background, but Ron was more refined in the Oxbridge tradition-both worked tirelessly for their patients and departments.
Three phones sat on his desk, constantly ringing in a cacophony, as he received calls from overseas and coordinated his registrars with his projects. This was Ron's idea of heaven, this was his Empire, His Heroic Age.
Meanwhile, his devoted secretary, Renee, quietly re-interpreted his missives and calmed the waters.
Ron operated on humans, birds, elephants with the same zeal and dedication implanting his high tech surgical fixation devices, all in the tradition of that famous 18th Century surgeon, John Hunter.
The vet audiences roared with approval when he proclaimed "the human trials are now complete, we can now safely use this device in animals".
Ron's dry humour never faulted. He once held up a huge nail at a surgical conference to declare that he now used his Huckstep Nail on babies( the audience demurred, as nails should not be used in babies)… baby elephants. Saving the lives of elephants at Taronga Zoo.
His zeal came to the fore again with the Granville Train Disaster in the 1970s.The mock training protocols he established there served up including for planning for the Sydney 2000 Games.
He took on, happily, impossible cases sent to him by surgeons around the country. Struggling with surgical fixations where other surgeons had failed and bailed out. Ron was not one to quit.
He retired at 65, in 1993, far too early and was not so happy about that, nor were his patients. That "Jesse Foot-like" character was at his heels. Fortunately, the department he had built was ably continued with Prof D Sonnabend. Ron said he would rather live on bread and water than retire to medico-legal report writing.
Ron died suddenly at RNS Hospital, 10 April, 2015 from a stroke. Hip problems had dogged his later years after he fell rushing to the OT in the 1970s, the change rooms, hoisted himself up on crutches to supervise a registrar doing a pin-and-plate, then later booked his own surgery. He was back then in the ward in a few days working). I spoke to him last year, he said he was feeling not his usual self, then Ann, his wife, told me he was still swimming a mile a week. Ron recommended eating green peas for good health.
He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Ann, three children (Susan,Michael,Nigel) and six grandchildren(Nicholas, Sarah, Charlotte, Natasha, Katherine and Matthew), son-in-law (Patrick), daughter-in-laws (Fiona and Stacey), brother (John) and sister-in law (Jill). Uncle and brother-in-law to the Huckstep and Macbeth extended families.