THE GORDON GORDON‐TAYLOR MEMORIAL LECTURE: SURGICAL GIANTS AND GIANTS AMONG SURGEONS – THE CASE OF ABRAHAM COLLES

Sir Gordon Gordon‐Taylor was a surgical giant and a giant among surgeons. There’s a distinction between the two. Surgical giants are technical geniuses who pave the way for others and set the standards against which others can measure their performance. Giants among surgeons contribute other things to the science and practice of surgery and sometimes to fields outside surgery. By these measures, Abraham Colles was not a surgical giant. He thought, wrote and taught about his interests. He enhanced the reputation of Irish surgery. In retrospect, his science and his ethics seem flawed by modern standards, but by the measures of his own time he was a model investigator and a man of outstanding moral probity. He is remembered for the eponymous Colles’s fracture and for Colles’s fascia and ligament. He held the Chair of Anatomy and Surgery in Dublin for 32 years and drew the admiration and affection of his contemporaries, colleagues and students. He was a giant among surgeons, and his name deserves commemoration.