Consultant Surgeon

• MRCS 1940 FRCS 1942 MB ChB 1938 MCh (Orth) 1950
• born in Bristol 
• Son of William Herbert Hicks, a printer’s manager, and his wife Norah Gertrude, née Lane.
• He studied medicine at Birmingham University, obtained his Fellowship in 1942 
• Served as a ship’s surgeon in the Merchant Navy between 1942 and 1946. 
• During his time as surgical registrar and resident surgical officer at Birmingham General Hospital he worked with H. H. Sampson, B. T. Rose, R. Scott Mason and J. B. Leather, and obtained the MCh (Orth) from Liverpool in 1950. 
• He was appointed surgeon to the Birmingham Accident Hospital in 1951
• He proved to be a thoughtful and innovative exponent of accident surgery. 
• “His studies of the anatomy of the foot elucidated the function of the Plantar fascia and both simplified and clarified the movements of inversion and eversion: as a result, he lectured at anatomists meetings both in this country and in France and the United States. He also showed how inversion could cause the familiar lateral rotation injury of the ankle.”
• His outstanding contribution was in the rigid fixation of fractures
• Recognised the dangers of corrosion of metallic implants
• He worked on the composition of metallic implants and the dangers of corrosion, the management of infected fractures, the treatment of non-union and the mechanics and anatomy of the foot. 
• The Hicks bone plate – considered the best plate for internal fixation of bone fractures, still used in many countries
• His lug plates, which most other surgeons referred to as Hicks’s plates, was devised to fix rigidly the notoriously unstable Galleazzi injury of the radius and when he reported his results, they far surpassed any that had been published. 
• The plate was then modified for use on the tibia. This conceptual and practical contribution marked the biggest advance in the surgical treatment of fractures since Küntscher introduced his nai1.
• His flair for controversy was shown in many of his publications, especially the classic work on external fixation (by plaster of Paris)
• Following the death of Ruscoe Clarke in 1959 Hicks moved from Team 2 and Mr. F. G. Badger, to join Mr. H. proctor on Team l.
• He was a fine teacher, a botanist of distinction (he joined an expedition to Bhutan and had two plants named after him) and the author of amusing and provocative articles in medical journals. 
• He made wine from his own grapes grown in Hereford.
• failing health prevented him from publishing the results of his long and detailed work on fractures of the tibia
• He married Dr Sheila C. S. Meux in 1955 and they had two sons and one daughter, who all survived him when he died on 4 January 1992