On the Shoulders of Giants: The History of NYU Langone Orthopedics

On the Shoulders of Giants: The History of NYU Langone Orthopedics captures the history of scientific achievement by the pioneers who helped develop the field of orthopedics. The voices of orthopedic surgeons, past and present, serve to channel the energy that has driven innovation in the department for more than 150 years. First, they were associated with Bellevue Medical College before starting a seven-bed “dispensary” called the Jewish Hospital for Deformities and Joint Diseases, which would later become the Hospital for Joint Diseases and is today known as NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital. Towering over the cast of characters animating this one-hour documentary are a number of physicians who found refuge from antisemitism at the hospital first established in 1905 by Henry and Herman Frauenthal. Henry had completed medical training under Bellevue’s Dr. Lewis Sayre, the first professor of orthopedics in America, and survived the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic following his marriage in Europe. When he returned to New York City he continued expanding the self-funded, family-run institution dedicated to orthopedic care that tended to underserved and dispossessed people of every faith in what is now Harlem. Among notable achievements in the field, the film spotlights Dr. Marian Frauenthal Sloane, the first female orthopedic surgeon in New York who later became the first female orthopedic surgeon published in an academic, peer-reviewed journal. Later, in a common thread that has run throughout the institution’s history of invention, as well as leadership in diversity, Haitian American surgeon Dr. J. Serge Parisien helped to develop modern arthroscopic surgery through his work at the hospital. Those legacies of innovation, teaching, equity, and inclusion carry on today through the hospital’s residency training program, which has the most diverse group of orthopedic residents in the nation. The many lines of transmission running throughout the film culminate in a symbolic tree that interlaces patient care, education and research. The tree stands as a metaphor for the legacies and driving forces in the practice of orthopedic surgery that have sought to conquer pain, cure musculoskeletal disease, and restore humanity among patients.