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ML M i d d l e b u r g
Dr. Edward MacMahon: A Curious Father Still Searching for Answers
Photo by Sarah Huntington
Ann Sheridan MacMahon and Ed MacMahon Sr. with Jocko and Agnes
By Leonard Shapiro For Middleburg Life
F
middleburg Life
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Dr. MacMahon is a native of Sydney, Australia and served with the Australian army as a teenage infantryman in New Guinea during World War II, clearly a life altering experience. He went to medical school in Australia, and in the early 1950s had an opportunity to get into a rigorous surgical program at the Georgetown University Hospital Center. Initially he studied general surgery, then had a three-year orthopedic residency. His initial plan was to go back to Australia to practice. But toward the end of his residency, he found out that if he passed his medical boards in the U.S., that wouldn’t mean much back in his native land. The surgical boards had to be administered in the British Empire. If not, he’d have to be a general practitioner. Though he was offered a partnership in several practices, Dr. MacMahon decided to go out on his own. “It was tough work, a lot of nights, a lot of weekends,” he said. “But I was young and energetic, and I certainly couldn’t complain about Northern Virginia as a place to practice.” Indeed, he performed surgery out of Arlington Hospital, Alexandria Hospital and Fairfax Hospital. He also eventually began getting more involved in research, helping to develop a bio-mechanics laboratory at Georgetown Hospital. In 1971, he and Ann decided to move their family of six children—Paul, Margaret, Ed, Steve, John and Helen—out to Middleburg and away from the encroaching city and burgeoning suburbs. They were living in West Springfield at the time “and it wasn’t that much of a ride out here,” he said. “There was only one traffic light back then between Middleburg and Fairfax Hospital. I certainly have no regrets. It was a little tough on me, but great for the kids.” Ann started a still thriving real estate business in Middleburg. And those kids are all highly productive adults now, with children of their own, and all adoring of their deep-thinking father. And it’s abundantly obvious he’s so very proud of every one of them, as well. n
in
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or as long as Middleburg attorney Ed MacMahon Jr. can recall, his father’s “mind has always been going 100 miles an hour. “I can remember, even with his medical practice, going back to school to get an advanced degree in calculus,” he said. “And that’s with six kids and being a doctor, and he’s in graduate school.” Nothing much has changed over the years for Dr. Edward MacMahon, a long-time orthopedic surgeon who has lived and, with his wife Ann, raised his family in Middleburg since 1971. As he approaches his 90th birthday, he is still very much the committed scientist, with an inquisitive curiosity on all manner of subjects that has never fully been sated. These days, he’s in the process of doing research on treating scoliosis in teenagers, a term used to describe any abnormal, sideways curvature of the spine. Dr. MacMahon, has recently been appointed as “Senior Orthopedic Advisor” to the recently formed National Scoliosis Center in Fairfax. He believes many severe cases that now are being repaired with a back rod and surgery may actually be improved enough with certain techniques to be treated by using a non-evasive brace, instead. “With a 60 degree curvature of the spine,” he said, “if you could get it to 30 percent, you could treat it with a brace and get it down to zero. Right now we’re doing the research to try to do it.” At some point, he’ll produce a paper on the subject, just as he once did years ago to deal with another medical problem in youngsters called Baker’s cyst, named for a London doctor who discovered cysts behind the knees in young children back in the 1880s. “We used to take them out,” Dr. MacMahon said. “But I kept noticing that you wouldn’t see teenagers with them. We decided to follow a group of kids who had them to see if they went away. We eventually found out there was no reason to take them out. I was invited to the Academy of Orthopedic Surgery to present the paper, and it got into the literature around the world to leave the things alone.”
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