Medicine in the 1870s was bold… and sometimes terrifying
.Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, one of America’s first orthopedic surgeons, believed that gravity itself could heal the human spine.
In his clinic, scoliosis patients were suspended by their arms, their bodies dangling in midair as their curved spines stretched straight.
Sayre would watch carefully — measuring every angle as tension pulled the twisted backbone into alignment.
Then came his invention: the plaster of Paris “jacket".
While patients were still hanging, he wrapped their torsos in wet plaster. When it hardened, it created a stiff cast that locked the spine in its corrected position.
Painful? Almost certainly.
Innovative? Undeniably.
For the first time, people with severe spinal deformities could walk, move, and live without the crushing metal braces of old.
Sayre’s daring experiment — part science, part courage — became one of the foundations of modern orthopedics.
His patients hung by their arms...But more than anything, they hung by hope!
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