As the founding medical director at St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Dr. William L. Estes gained national prominence as an innovator in the medical world. Estes pioneered a revolutionary “plate and peg” method of splinting compound fractures, which he demonstrated at the 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago.
The son of antebellum Southern aristocracy, Estes also initiated the widespread use of first aid kits for the region’s railroad industry in 1886, years before their use became common elsewhere in the country. Estes served as Chief Surgeon for the Lehigh Valley Railroad and Bethlehem Iron Company where he instituted a first aid training program for industrial workers. Estes’s innovative practices eventually became the national standard.
