ACS Bulletin - May 2017

Pediatric surgery approaches a 100-year milestone in 2017. December 6 marks the centennial of the maritime disaster off the coast of Nova Scotia known as the Halifax Explosion. On that date in 1917, the French munitions ship

Mont-Blanc, carrying wartime explosives, collided with the Imo, a Dutch relief vessel, in Halifax harbor. Within a half hour the

Mont-Blanc detonated, with a blast that leveled buildings within a two-square-mile area.

So powerful was the explosion that the six-ton anchor of the

Imo was found in a ruined building nearly two miles from the harbor. 1 Historians estimated that it was the most powerful man-made explosion in recorded history until the Trinity atomic bomb test of 1945.2

Many locals watched the conflagration from their windows, their morning routines interrupted by the spectacle.

Thousands of bystanders, including hundreds of children, were killed or maimed by the explosion. Glass shattered into the faces of onlookers in their homes, leaving approximately

200 completely blind and another

500 with serious eye injuries. A radiologist noted more than 226 fractures in his log. In all, an estimated 2,800 people died as a result of the Halifax Explosion. 1

With local health care facilities destroyed and the surviving physicians and nurses undersupplied and overwhelmed, Canadian authorities struggled to bring relief to the devastated city. A medical convoy of 40 physicians and nurses from Boston, MA, led by 37-year-old William Ladd, MD, FACS, traveled by train through a blizzard, arriving in Halifax two days after the disaster. A damaged but still serviceable building at Saint Mary’s College was converted into an infirmary, where the team treated victims maimed and blinded by shards of wood and glass.

The medical convoy remained on-site for nearly a month, through the winter holidays. 1

The “father” of pediatric surgery

Legend has it that the experience inspired Dr. Ladd to devote his surgical career to the care of children. Robert E. Gross, MD, FACS, Dr. Ladd’s successor as surgeon-in-chief at The Children’s Hospital (now called Boston Children’s Hospital) in Boston, was among those who believed the origin of the specialty began in Halifax. In fact, Richard Goldbloom, MD, FACS, a pediatric surgeon in Halifax, had a chance encounter with Dr. Gross in 1976, where