Adolf Lorenz and the Lolita Armour Case
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ORTHOPAEDIC HERITAGE
Adolf Lorenz and the Lolita Armour Case Gerold Holzer 1
&
Lukas A. Holzer 2
Received: 6 May 2020 / Accepted: 11 May 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Almost 120 years ago, in 1902, the American multimillionaire J. Ogden Armour invited the Austrian orthopaedic surgeon Adolf Lorenz, professor at the University of Vienna, to treat his daughter Lolita. Lolita was born premature in 1896 and spent the first months of her life in an incubator. Later she was diagnosed with congenital dislocation of both hips. Lorenz had developed a “bloodless” treatment method and was invited by the Armour family to Chicago to “operate” on Lolita. Both hips had already been treated by an American orthopaedic surgeon before but without a satisfactory result. Lorenz should achieve a better one. The operation was performed in Chicago on 12 October 1902 and was accompanied by a very large media spectacle. This article is mainly based on contemporary newspaper reports. Keywords Adolf Lorenz . Armour family . Congenital dislocation of the hip . Bloodless surgery . 1902 Lolita Armour (Fig. 1), the granddaughter of Philipp D. Armour1, one of the richest men in America at the end of the nineteenth century, was born premature (34th week of pregnancy) and weighed only 3 lb. In order to ensure her survival, her grandfather had an incubator built, in which she had to spend her first year. Later, she was diagnosed with congenital dislocation of both hips (CDH). After the grandfather’s death, Lolita’s father became the company’s CEO and increased the family’s fortune to $100 million.2 Adolf Lorenz (Fig. 2) [1], an Austrian orthopaedic surgeon, was born to poor parents in 1854. His uncle enabled him to study at the gymnasium of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Paul in Lavanttal and later in the Austrian state gymnasium in Klagenfurt. Then he studied medicine at the University of Vienna [2] receiving his MD in 1880. During his training in surgery with Eduard Albert [3], Lorenz [4–8] developed an
1 Armour, Philip Danforth Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_ Danforth_Armour (last accessed: 4th May 2020) 2
Armour, J. Ogden Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Ogden_ Armour (last accessed 4th May 2020)
* Gerold Holzer [email protected]
allergy to carbol. So, Lorenz, among other diseases, also devoted to CDH [9–11] and began to focus on “bloodless surgery” [12]. In 1896, Lorenz published the first results,3 his book On the Healing of Congenital Hip Dislocation was published in 1900 (Fig. 3) [13]. At that time, he had already gained experience from more than 1000 patients4 and presented the results at XIII International Congress in Paris.5 American doctors, who were world leaders in orthopaedics at the time, also dealt with CDH [14]. Above all, John Ridlon, already in 1890 focused in a lecture on “The subject of treatment of hip-joint disease is narrowed down to fixation and traction.”6 Lorenz’s method was already known in America in 1898. At the meeting of the “New York Academy of Medicine Section on Ort
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