Josep Trueta

In his youth he felt called to an artistic career, being very keen on painting, and excelled in sports like fencing, but ended up studying medicine in the University of Barcelona.In the 1920s he temporarily moved to Vienna to further his studies and it was there that he focused on the development and application of innovative techniques for bone treatments, being considered because of this one of the fathers of modern traumatology.In 1935 he was named Director of the Surgery service at the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, a position he held during the Spanish Civil War.His use of a new plaster cast method for the treatment of open wounds and fractures helped save a great number of lives and still more limbs, during several wars.He joined the team run by Florey and Chain that developed penicillin in Oxford, and held the first live animal to be injected with the groundbreaking antibiotic.
Monument to Trueta in Barcelona
Josep Trueta HospitalBarcelonaSpanishmedicineUniversity of OxfordCatalanPoblenoufencingUniversity of BarcelonaViennatraumatologyworkplace accidentsHospital de Sant PauSpanish Civil WargangreneCatalan nationalistPerpignanForeign OfficeEnglandWorld War IIUnited KingdomFrancoist SpainCatalan historypenicillinOxfordOrthopaedic SurgeryNuffield Orthopaedic Centrerenal circulationCataloniaGironaJosep Trueta University HospitalMexico