Birth Of A Hip On this date in 1911, the British orthopedic surgeon who invented the modern artificial hip, was born. Following duty as a battlefield surgeon in World War II, Sir John Charnley, M.D., devoted two decades to developing a viable replacement for the hip and a procedure for implanting it. Charnley replaced the uncomfortable, noisy, stainless steel and screws in earlier prosthetics with polyethylene and dental cement. His first test of the device took place in 1972. By 1976, his procedure allowed more than 9,000 arthritic people to walk normally. Charnley died in 1982 at the age of 71.
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