Modern orthopaedics and the forgotten child
Abstract
The French physician, Nicholas Andre, coined the term ‘orthopaedics’ in 1741, having derived it from the Greek orthos meaning straight, and paedeia meaning the rearing of children. Therefore, ‘orthopaedics’ can be loosely translated as the art of making children straight.
Much has changed in the subsequent 300 odd years, and the field of orthopaedic surgery has evolved and expanded beyond anything that Andre and his peers could have foreseen, displacing the management of children’s deformities further and further into the background.