William John Little

William John Little (1810–1894) was an English surgeon who is credited with the first medical identification of spastic diplegia, when he observed it in the 1860s amongst children.

[1] Little did not have any spasticity himself, but he suffered childhood poliomyelitis with residual left lower-extremity paraparesis, complicated by severe talipes.

[2] Little is also known for his doctoral dissertation in 1837 on tenotomy, the first monograph on the subject ever published, and Little became the known source of this operation, intended for the correction of skeletal deformity secondary to neuromuscular disorders.

[2] Little later travelled to Germany to study the technique of subcutaneous tenotomy with its originator, Louis Stromeyer, who subsequently corrected Little's deformed foot by this method.

Among his many publications was "On the Deformities of the Human Frame" (1853) in which he first described pseudo-hypertrophic muscular dystrophy, preceding Guillaume Duchenne's paper on the same condition by eight years.