06/10/2025
Los comienzos del tratamiento moderno de la Escoliosis podrian parecer grotescos pero fueron pasos al tratamiento moderno de esta desfigurante condición! Y seguimos avanzando.
In the 1870s, Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, one of America’s pioneering orthopedic surgeons, approached scoliosis with methods that today seem both strange and daring. In his private practice, patients were suspended by their arms, their bodies dangling in the air, as gravity stretched their spines. Sayre would carefully study the curvature, gauging how the suspension eased the distortions that twisted their backs.
Once the spine had been elongated and aligned as best as possible, he introduced his innovation: a plaster of Paris “jacket.” Applied while the patient was still suspended, the rigid shell hardened around their torso, locking the spine into its corrected position. It was an attempt to relieve pressure, stabilize the body, and grant mobility without the crude braces and bindings then in common use.
Photographs of Sayre at work reveal both the clinical curiosity of the age and the profound hope placed in medical ingenuity. His methods marked a turning point in American orthopedics, blending experiment with compassion, and though modern techniques have long surpassed his plaster jackets, the spirit of innovation he embodied endures in every effort to ease the burden of deformity and restore dignity to patients’ lives.
