Oskar Vulpius

VULPIUS, Oskar (born 1867), a prominent German orthopedist. He received his medical education in Heidelberg and Berlin. In 1890, he was awarded a university prize in Heidelberg for his work "Über die Entwicklung u. Ausbreitung d. Tangentialfasern in der menschlichen Grosshirnrinde" (Archiv f. Psychiatrie, B. XXIII, 1892) and the degree of Doctor of Medicine for his dissertation "Die Radicaloperationen der Hernien in d. vorderen Bauchwand." From 1891 to 1896, he served as an assistant at the surgical clinic of Professor Czerny and organized a university orthopedic outpatient clinic. In 1896, he founded a private orthopedic hospital, which subsequently became the largest institute of its kind in Germany. In 1910, he created the Baden State Asylum for Cripples, complete with a clinic and technical workshops. Furthermore, at the resort of Rappenau, he founded a sanatorium for bone tuberculosis, which was expanded after the imperialist war and supplemented with an orthopedic Freiluftklinik (open-air clinic). The scientific and practical merits of Vulpius in the field of orthopedic surgery brought him widespread fame relatively early, far beyond the borders of Germany. Thus, in 1903, he was the first to be awarded the King Umberto Prize by the Rizzoli Institute in Italy for his work "Die Sehnenüberpflanzung" (Leipzig, 1902). Among other monographic works that secure Vulpius a place of honor in the history of the development of orthopedics, his works on spinal infantile paralysis and the book written jointly with A. Stoffel, "Orthopädische Operationslehre" (3rd edition—Stuttgart, 1924), deserve special attention. In total, Vulpius published approximately 300 works on orthopedic and surgical topics.