Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen papers

Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen (1886-1953), B.S., University of Wisconsin, 1910; M.D., Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, 1914.

Marius Nygaard Smith-Petersen was born in November 1886 in Grimstad, Norway, to Morten Smith-Petersen (1853-1888) and Kaia Jensine Rosalie Ursin (1854-). After the death of her husband in 1888, Kaia Ursin moved the family to Oslo, Norway; in 1903, Smith-Petersen and his mother emigrated to the United States, settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Smith-Petersen graduated from West Side High School in 1906 and matriculated at the University of Chicago, Illinois, where he attended classes for one year before transferring to the University of Wisconsin where he graduated with a B.S. in 1910. He began medical school at the University of Wisconsin, working as a laboratory assistant to Joseph Erlanger (1874-1965), then transferred to Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, graduating with a M.D. in 1914.

Smith-Petersen completed an internship in internal surgery at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, under Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) and accompanied the surgeon and the American Ambulance to Paris with the First Harvard Medical Unit during World War I. Smith-Petersen also studied orthopedics with E.G. Brackett (1860-1942) at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and became his assistant in practice in 1917.

Smith-Petersen went into general practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1922 and held successive positions at the Harvard Medical School as an assistant instructor (1920-1930), instructor (1930-1946), and clinical professor (1935-1946) of orthopedic surgery. He was chief of the orthopedic service at the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1929 to 1946 and served as a consultant to United States Surgeon General Thomas Parran, Jr., between 1942 and 1945.

Smith-Petersen had a particular interest in the treatment of the hip and lower back, including fractures of the femoral neck, mold (or mould) arthroplasty, and spinal osteotomy. He developed the hip-nailing technique as a way of treating fractures of the femoral head; the treatment included development of the Smith-Petersen nail as surgical hardware for the procedure. He was one of the creators of mold arthroplasty, a technique designed to stimulate cartilage regeneration on both sides of a molded joint fitted over the femoral head. Smith-Petersen tried a number of materials for the artificial joint including glass, Pyrex, and Bakelite, before following a recommendation from a dentist to try Vitallium, an alloy of cobalt, chromium, and molybdenum, with trace amounts of other substances. Vitallium is resistant to corrosion and breakage and frequently used in dentistry and artificial joint work; it proved a successful material for mold arthroplasty. Nathaniel Allison (1876-1932), Carroll Larson (1909-), and Otto Aufranc (1909-1990) worked with Smith-Petersen in perfecting both the molded joint and the associated surgical technique.

Smith-Petersen married Hilda Whitney Dickinson in 1917; the couple had three children: Porter, Morton, and Hilda. Smith-Petersen died in 1953.