- Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen
-
Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen Born 1886
GrimstadDied 1953 Citizenship United States Nationality Norvege Fields surgery Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen ( November 14, 1886 – May 1953) was Norwegian-born American physician and orthopaedic surgeon.
Contents
Background
Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen was born of a merchant marine family in the coastal town of Grimstad, in Aust-Agder county, southwest of Oslo, Norway. He emigrated with his mother to Milwaukee in 1903, at age 16. He attended the University of Chicago and University of Wisconsin, receiving a B.S. from Wisconsin in 1910. At the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin,, he worked as a laboratory assistant to physiologist, Dr. Joseph Erlanger. Smith-Petersen graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1914 and served a surgical internship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital under Harvey Williams Cushing, M.D..[1]
Career
From 1923 until his death in 1953 he carried on an active orthopedic surgery practice while successively serving as Instructor, Assistant Clinical Professor, and Clinical Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard. In 1929 he was appointed Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital. in 1925, Smith-Petersen introduced the three-flanged steel nail for insertion across the fracture site in hip fractures, an innovation that considerably improved recovery and mortality rates from hip fractures.[2]
In May 1953 he performed successful surgery on entertainer Arthur Godfrey, who had been in pain for over 20 years after an auto accident. Smith-Petersen died just days after his surgery on Godfrey.[3]
References
External links
Categories:- 1886 births
- 1953 deaths
- People from Grimstad
- American people of Norwegian descent
- Norwegian emigrants to the United States
- American physicians
- American medical biography stubs
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
