One Millimeter at a Time

In the 1950s, a Soviet orthopedic surgeon named Gavriil Ilizarov made a remarkable discovery in Siberia: shattered bones could be regrown. His device — a ring of metal rods anchored to the bone — would slowly pull the fracture apart at exactly one millimeter per day. Move too fast, and the gap would fill with fibrous scar tissue instead of bone.…