THE JOURNAL OF

HAND SURGERY

TRIBUTE

Dr. Joseph Boyes

With the publication of this issue, Dr. Joseph Boyes becomes the Editor Emeritus of THE JouRNAL OF HAND SURGERY. As the first editor, Dr. Boyes assumed the heavy task of creating a journal for a very special field of surgery. By his insistance on the highest standard of scientific and literary effort, the JouRNAL has already built a worldwide circulation. His wisdom and vast clinical experience afforded a discriminating choice of papers and provided much advice for his authors. His intimate knowledge of the entire field of hand surgery is paralleled by his equal knowledge and concern for the written word.

Joseph Harold Boyes, born in Hebron, Nebraska in 1905, was educated at Stanford University. His schol­arly abilities were recognized early in his career by his election as both Phi Beta Kappa and AOA before he received his M.D. degree in 1930. Fifty years ago, during his internship at Massachusetts General and Peter Bent Brigham Hospitals, Dr. Boyes published his first article "Dover's powder and Robinson Crusoe" in the New England Journal of Medicine.* In this paper, he describes how Dr. Dover, at the age of 48, led an expedition that rescued a castaway named Alexander Selkirk-Robinson Crusoe. In the article, Dr. Boyes quotes with evident satisfaction Dover's criticism of other physicians for ''stuffing their books with long and tedious prescriptions," a sin he has never tolerated in his own writings or in those published by the 118 hand surgeons he has trained.

Dr. Boyes published his first paper on hand surgery in 1935, "Four cases of latent rupture of the extensor pollicis longus tendon." Since that time, his papers have been exclusively for his chosen field. Virtually every year since, he has written on some aspect of hand surgery-some years yielding two, three, and

*N Engl J Med 204:440, 1931.

Official journal AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR SURGERY OF THE HAND

Dr. Joseph H. Boyes

even four papers, except for a dry period which oc­curred, perforce, during his service in the China, Burma, India Theater in World War II. Accompanying this steady output of valuable scientific writings has been the responsibility of editing two editions of Bun­nell's classic Surgery ofthe Hand and the production of his own scholarly book On the Shoulders of Giants.

Blessed with an editor with such a background, it would seem inevitable that this new JouRNAL should succeed, but it took many hours of hard and persistent work accompanied by a delight in the use of language to make it thrive. It was hoped that the JouRNAL might achieve a circulation of 3,000 copies at the end of its third year. That 7,000 copies of this issue have been printed, is evidence of Dr. Boyes' superb achievement. Our Society has been well served, and this JouRNAL has flourished because a man who richly deserved a peaceful retirement after such a distinguished career chose to take on this vital task for the surgical specialty of which he is a founding member.

In this decision, as in so many others, Dr. Boyes has been strongly supported by his wonderful wife Judy. I

0363-5023/81/020107+02$00.20/0 © 1981 American Society for Surgery of the Hand THE JOURNAL OF HAND SURGERY 107

108 Flatt

suspect she knew what manner of man she married those 50 years ago. Maybe she had even read his first paper, which in its penultimate sentence, although dis­cussing the hardy Dr. Dover, in fact, well describes the Joe Boyes we know- "A man who had the love of adventure so ingrained in him that, at an age when most of us are looking forward to a few years of peace and comfort, he organized an expedition, accompanied it, and led it in its battles. "

The Journal of HAND SURGERY

It falls to me to try to follow his lead. He has fought the major battles, but even in his second retirement his agreement to become Editor Emeritus will provide me the advice I know I am going to need in the many skirmishes ahead.

Adrian E. Flatt, M.D.