In lost toes, lasting lessons
Ernest Shackleton’s desperate 1916 open boat voyage over hundreds of miles of stormy seas is hailed as an epic feat that saved his stranded crew, but more interesting to a Harvard physician is the tale of the 22 crewmen left behind on tiny Elephant Island and the work of two doctors who tended them. The physicians, Alexander Macklin and James McIlroy, lanced abscesses and pulled teeth, for starters. Their most impressive accomplishment was saving a crewman’s life by amputating toes that were so badly frostbitten they were turning gangrenous. The work was detailed in a paper published in the journal Anesthesiology by Paul Firth, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a pediatric anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Firth reviewed eyewitness reports, diaries, and other documents to write a thorough account of the surgery, which was conducted on an operating table made of wooden boxes laid out...