William Ludwig Detmold

William Ludwig Detmold was a German-American surgeon, born in Hanover on 27 December 1808 and dead in New York City on 26 December 1894, who is credited with introducing orthopedic surgery into the United States. The son of a physician, he took his medical degree at the University of Göttingen in 1830 and served as a surgeon in the royal Hanoverian grenadier guard before going to the United States on leave in 1837, then sending in his resignation from New York. By 1841 he had opened an orthopedic clinic in the city, and he ran a dispensary until the Civil War, when he helped organize the United States Army Medical Corps. He became professor of military surgery and hygiene at Columbia in 1862, was made professor emeritus in 1866, and during the war introduced a one-handed knife and fork that the army listed as Detmold's knife. He was a founder and first president of the New York County Medical Association, and his book on the treatment of club foot is described as a milestone of orthopedics before antisepsis.