John Kirkup, the distinguished orthopaedic surgeon and archivist recently published a book describing the history of amputation. This annotation highlights the importance of this work and the particular relevance of many of its themes to current orthopaedic and trauma practice.

This paper describes how we came to understand the pathophysiology of Volkmann’s ischaemic contracture with references to relevant papers in this Journal, and the investigation and management of acute compartment syndrome is briefly discussed.