(1857–1928) had established the world's first x-ray service for patients in Glasgow Royal Infirmary in March 1896. This allowed James Hogarth Pringle an early, perhaps unique experience in fracture diagnosis and management using x-rays, and formed the basis for his book on fractures and their treatment. He had the added advantage of working in the hospital where Joseph Lister had first introduced antisepsis and would surely have been aware of his own father's work on antisepsis in introducing Listerian antisepsis into Australia. He was, like Sir William Macewen, an early exponent of aseptic technique in surgery. Both of these factors undoubtedly contributed to his expertise and success with fracture management. He was a pioneer of treating fractures by fixation and had impressive results with an amputation rate for sepsis of only 2.6%, a dramatic reduction on the norm for the time. “There are few cases," he wrote, " which afford a better test of aseptic methods." But it was his policy of fixation of long fractures in an age when treatment by traction was the norm that marked him out as a pioneer. "... In every case," he wrote, "I have employed some form of 'fixation' of the bone fragments; the 'fixation' being effected in some instances by wiring the main fragments, in others by the use of 'plates' and in others generally in the case of a small fragment (e.g. a portion of an articular surface) which has been fractured off and the use of a screw to fix the small to the large segment of the bone." In 1910, he published Fractures and their Treatment, a textbook which became a standard and authoritative work on fracture treatment for more than a generation. Hindquarter amputation He was also a pioneer of hindquarter amputation, a radical operation involving division of the pubic symphysis and the sacroiliac joint, performing the first successful such amputation in Britain in 1900 for tuberculosis of the hip which had spread to the pelvis. He was the first in the world to perform the one stage procedure for sarcoma of the thigh. The size and relative success of Pringle's series may be judged by comparison with the subsequent experience of Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor, widely regarded as a pioneer of the technique, who was generous in his praise of Pringle's technique and results. Head injury Pringle developed expertise in head injury, working as assistant to Macewen, a