Content area
Full Text
IN THE EARLY 20th century, an established surgical specialty catering to pediatric surgery did not exist, and pediatric surgical ailments were operated on by general surgeons. With his devotion to childhood diseases and his unique thinking in surgical development,
William E. Ladd would become a leading figure in America by pioneering the field of pediatric surgery. William Edwards Ladd was born on September 8, 1880, toWilliamJones Ladd and his wife, Anna Russell Watson, in Milton, Massachusetts, and he was the sixth of seven children. Following in his father's footsteps, he attended Harvard University, graduating with a B.A. at the age of 22 years in 1902, and subsequently an M.D. in 1906 from Harvard Medical School.1 After medical school he trained in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. After training he was appointed assistant professor in surgery at Harvard. He rose to full professor (Fig. 1) not just as a result of wisdom and love for children, but because he was an academic, talented, well-known surgeon. In 1940, the William E. Ladd Professor of Child Surgery Chair at Harvard Medical School was established in his honor.1
Many believed that the most powerful nonnuclear explosion in the history ofmankind to that date occurred in Halifax, Nova Scoria, Canada, on December 6, 1917, and had a major impact on Ladd and his life as a pediatric surgeon. Approximately 4 per cent of Halifax's population died from a catastrophe involving two ships, the S.S Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, and the S.S. Imo, a Norwegian relief steamship, when they collided in the Halifax harbor. More than 500 children...