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The Body Electric
broke both legs in an auto crash. The local hospital put him in traction,
with pins drilled through the skin and bones to hold the pieces together.
When he was moved to the base hospital a few days later, all the pins
had to be removed due to infection.
Jim's doctors couldn't operate because of the bacteria, so they had to
be satisfied with a cast. Because he'd broken one leg below and the other
above the knee, he needed a huge cast called a double hip spica. He was
totally encased in plaster, from his feet to the middle of his chest, for six
months. By August, his left lower leg had healed, but the right femur
showed no progress at all. The quarter-inch holes where the pins had
been were still draining pus, preventing surgery. That September he was
given a medical discharge and flown to the Syracuse VA hospital.
When I first saw him, he was still in a large cast, although now his left
leg was free. The halves of the right thighbone were completely loose.
There was nothing in standard practice to do but leave the cast on and
hope. After six more months Jim's hope was just about gone. For a year
he'd lain in bed, unable to leave the hospital for even a brief visit home.
He vented his rage against the staff, then grew despondent and unable to
face the future, which no longer seemed to include his right leg.
Then Sal Barranco, a young orthopedic surgeon in his last year of
residency, was assigned to my service from the medical school. He'd
already been a good doctor when he briefly worked with me two years
before—smart, hardworking, and really interested in his patients. He
took over Jim's care, spent many hours talking with him, and arranged
for counseling. Nothing seemed to help. Jim slipped further and further
away from us.
Sal had always been interested in what was going on in the lab. In
fact, I'd often tried to interest him in a career of teaching and research,
but he preferred surgery and its rewards of helping people directly. In
February of 1972, as we were nearing the clinical stage with our bone
stimulator, Sal said, "You know, Dr. Becker, you really should consider
electrically stimulating Jim's fracture. I don't see anything else left. It's
his last chance."
The problem was that none of Friedenberg's patients had been in-
fected. Although Jim's septic pin tracts weren't right at the fracture,
they were too close for comfort. If I stirred up those bacteria when I
operated to insert the electrodes, the game was lost. Moreover, it was
obvious by now that electricity was the most important growth stimulus
to cells. Even if it produced healing, no one could be sure what these
cells would do in the future. They might become hypersensitive to other
stimuli and start growing malignantly later. This was the first time in