Figure: Dr. Duncan C. McKeever is shown. Figure is ©1960 by the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Inc. and is reprinted with permission from Duncan Clark McKeever 1905-1959. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 1960;42:189-190.Duncan Clark McKeever was born in rural Kansas in 1905 [5, 8, 9]. He attended local schools and having financed his own education (partly through the Naval Reserve) graduated from the University of Kansas Medical School in 1929. He interned at the Naval Hospital in Brooklyn, then was assigned to the Great Lakes Training Station in Chicago for three years. He returned to Kansas City to begin a residency in pathology, where he was inspired by the work of Drs. Frank Dickson and Rex Diveley (both of whom were early Presidents of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons [3, 4]) and subsequently studied orthopaedic surgery with them. He moved to Houston in 1939 to enter into private practice, but his practice was interrupted by the war, where he served at the Long Beach Naval Hospital and Area Hospital in Honolulu. He returned to private practice in 1945 and continued to be very active until the time of his death. His premature death occurred by a traffic accident: on a rainy day in October 1959, he had borrowed a car which ran out of gas and, as he was filling it, he was struck by another car and killed. He was a man of great energy by all reports. In addition to his many publications and innovations, he served in leadership positions in a variety of professional organizations. He was a founding member of the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons in 1947. His innovations include a patellar prosthesis first reported in 1955 [8] and a tibial plateau prosthesis reported in 1960 [9]. These sorts of innovations were forerunners of our contemporary joint implants. The paper we reproduce here, however, describes the use of maggots to treat infection. McKeever [7] credits Baer [2] with the development of the approach in osteomyelitis based on observations Baer made in France during WWI. (Editor's note: The error in the referencing in this Classic between References 4 and 5 is in the original manuscript.) However, Baer noted previous writers (including the great French war surgeon and surgeon-in-chief to Napoleon's armies, Dominique Jean Larrey) had mentioned the beneficial effects of maggots in soft tissue wounds throughout the 1800s. Thus, the concept was well-known, if not widely used, and not specifically applied to chronic osteomyelitis. McKeever [7] describes in great detail the production of nonsterile maggots and how to apply them in chronic osteomyelitis. While the beneficial effects of maggots in wounds and in osteomyelitis in particular have been documented over the years, they have never gained widespread use. Nonetheless, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the use of sterile maggots in 2004 [1]. As noted by McKeever, the method remains simple and inexpensive, and appears effective [6, 7, 10]. The approach is one which could readily be used worldwide, particularly when antibiotics are not available or effective and when surgery is impractical.