Libro en el que se revisa de forma genérica y original la historia de la especialidad médica de Cirugía Ortopédica y Traumatología de diferentes países de los cinco continentes, atendiendo especialmente a aquellos monumentos, edificios y museos visitables en los que se hace referencia a técnicas, utensilios o personajes médicos de dicha especialidad. Se hace especial referencia a los centros balneoterápicos decimonónicos y su transición unas veces hacia centros hospitalarios de cirugía ortopédica o hacia centros de balneoterapia modernos e incluso centros turísticos.
Julio Ribes-Iborra is M.D., Ph.D. by the University of Valencia (Spain) and specialist in Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology. He increased his studies of this specialisation in the Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades of Paris and in the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for children of Dallas (Texas).
He has successively practised his career in the University Clinic Hospital of Valencia, the Dr. Peset University Hospital of Valencia, and fi nally in the University Hospital La Ribera in Alzira (Valencia), in this latter as head of the Orthopaedics Department for twentytwo years.
In the teaching field he has been associate professor in the Surgery Department of the Faculty of Medicine of Valencia and professor (AVAP accreditation), in the Catholic University of Valencia.
He occupied the presidency of scientific associations like SOTOCAV (Valencia Association of Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology), and the OTC (Orthopaedic & Trauma Care, previously AIOD), Spanish chapter. He has presided the Organising Committee of the “52 SECOT National Spanish Congress” held in Valencia and currently is the Spanish Representative (National Delegate) of SICOT with headquarters in Belgium.
He also has published many articles in national and international journals. He is the author of a book about prognostics in osteosarcoma and different chapters in books about the speciality. He has been deputy editor of the Revista Española de Cirugía Osteoarticular (RECO) and corrector of EORS. He has written two medical history books about the speciality of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Surgery.
On this occasion and in the latter years of his professional career, he illustrates us with an attractive entitled and enjoyable work about some aspects of the history of the Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery speciality, fruit of several notes and references that the author has recompiled throughout his professional life.
