LECTURE 13
Romanian medicine in
the second half of the
19th century up to present
time
•
•
Romanian medicine in the 20th century
Outstanding personalities of the
Romanian medicine in the 19th and 20th
century
 Romanian
medicine in the 20th
century
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We can divide the Romanian medicine of the 20th century
into three stages:
The beginnings of organizing the medical support and the
dependence of the foreign schools of medicine (1800-1857);
The creation of the Romanian medical school (1858-1886);
The debut of creativity of the Romanian medicine and the
registration in the world’s values.
Outstanding personalities of the Romanian medicine in the
19th and 20th century
Nicolae Kretzulescu
 Carol Davila
 Victor Babes
 Ion Cantacuzino
 Gheorghe Marinescu
 Dimitrie Gerota
 Nicolae Paulescu
 Constantin Levaditi
 Constantin I. Parhon
 Iuliu Hatieganu
 Ana Aslan
 George Emil Palade
 Nicolae Cajal
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Nicolae Creţulescu or Kretzulescu (1812-1900)
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was a Romanian politician and physician. He served three
terms as Prime Minister of Romania: from 1862 to 1863,
again from 1865 to 1866, and finally in 1867. He was elected
to the Romanian Academy.
Born in Bucharest, he studied medicine in Paris, having
Gustave Flaubert as a colleague. As a physician, his notable
work was the translation of Jean Cruveilhier's manual of
anatomy.
Carol Davila (1828 – 24 August 1884)
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was a prestigious Romanian physician of Italian ancestry.
Davila studied medicine at the University of Paris, graduating in February
1853. In March 1853, he arrived in Romania. He was the organizer of the
military medical service for the Romanian Army and of the country's
public health system. Davila, together with Nicolae Kretzulescu,
inaugurated medical training in Romania in 1857, by founding the
National School of Medicine and Pharmacy.
It was due to his many activities that several scientific associations
appeared in Romania: the Medical Society (1857), the Red Cross (1876),
the Natural Sciences Society (1876). With his assistance, two medical
journals entered print: the Medical Register (1862) and the Medical Gazette
(1865). During the Independence War (1877-1878) he was the head of
the Army's sanitary service.
Davila is also credited with the invention of the Davila tincture for the
treatment of cholera, an opioid-based oral solution in use for
symptomatic management of diarrhea.
Victor Babeş (4 July 1854 – 19 October 1926)
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was a Romanian physician, biologist, and one of the earliest
bacteriologists. He made early and significant contributions to the study
of rabies, leprosy, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases.
The Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and the University of
Medicine and Pharmacy "Victor Babes" Timisoara bears his name.
Born in Vienna (at the time, the capital of the Austrian Empire) to an
ethnic Romanian family from the Banat, he studied in Budapest, then in
Vienna, where he received his doctorate in Science. Attracted by the
discoveries of Louis Pasteur, he left for Paris, and worked first in
Pasteur's laboratory, and then with Victor André Cornil.
In 1885 he discovered a parasitic sporozoan of the ticks, named Babesia,
and which causes a rare and severe disease called babesiosis. In the same
year, he published the first treatise of bacteriology in the world, Bacteria
and their role in the histopathology of infectious diseases, which he co-authored
with Cornil.
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Babeş' scientific endeavours were wide-ranging. He was the first to
demonstrate the presence of tuberculous bacilli in the urine of infected
patients. He also discovered cellular inclusions in rabies-infected nerve
cells. Of diagnostic value, they were to be named after him (Babeş-Negri
bodies).
Babeş was one of the founders of serum therapy, and was the first to
introduce rabies vaccination to Romania. His work also had a strong
influence upon veterinary medicine, especially concerning prophylaxis
and serum medication.
He became a professor of Pathology and Bacteriology at the Carol
Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest. He was also a
member of the Romanian Academy (in 1893), of the Paris Académie
Nationale de Médecine, and an officer of the French Légion d'honneur.
His nephew, Aurel Babeş, was also a physician, who discovered a
screening test for cervical cancer.
Ioan C. Cantacuzino or Ion Cantacuzino (November 25, 1863 –
January 14, 1934)
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was a renowned Romanian physician and bacteriologist, a professor at the
Romanian School of Medicine and Pharmacy and a member of the Romanian
Academy. He was the founder of the fields of microbiology and experimental
medicine in Romania, and creator of the Ioan Cantacuzino Institute.
In 1901, Cantacuzino was assigned a teaching position in Bucharest, where he
became a major influence on a generation of scientists. His discoveries were
relevant in the treatment of cholera, epidemic typhus, tuberculosis, and scarlet
fever.
As a disciple of Mechnikov, he devoted part of his research to expanding on the
latter's field of interest (phagocytes, the body's means of defence against
pathogens, as well as the issue of immunity and invertebrates). He invented the
notion of contact immunity.
During the Second Balkan War, Cantacuzino was appointed head of the staff
combatting the cholera epidemic in the ranks of the Romanian Army stationed in
Dobruja; he was assigned to the same position during the Romanian campaign in
World War I, in the fight against typhus.
Gheorghe Marinescu (February 28, 1863, Bucharest – May 15, 1938,
Bucharest)
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was a Romanian neurologist, founder of the Romanian School of
Neurology.
After the attendance of Medicine at the Bucharest University, Marinescu
received most of his medical education as preparator at the laboratory of
histology at the Brâncoveanu Hospital and as assistant at the
Bacteriological Institute under Victor Babeş, and with Babes already early
published several works on myelitis transversa, hysterical muteness,
dilatation of the pupil in pneumonia
After qualification, on the recommendation of Babes the government
sent him with a grant to Paris to undertake postgraduate training in
neurology under Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital, where
he met Pierre Marie, Joseph Babinski and Fulgence Raymond. He later
worked with Carl Weigert in Frankfurt and then with Emil du BoisReymond in Berlin. On the assignment of Pierre Marie he lectured on
the pathological anatomy of acromegaly at the Berlin International
Congress in 1890.
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After nine years abroad Marinescu returned in 1897 to Bucharest where
he received his doctorate. At Bucharest a new professorial department
had been created for him at the Pantelimon Hospital. Shortly thereafter,
in 1897, a chair of Clinical Neurology was created in the University of
Bucharest, at the Colentina Hospital. He remained in this post for the
next 41 years and is regarded as the founder of the Romanian School of
Neurology.
He had a wide range of research interests, including pathological
anatomy and experimental neuropathology.
Daily contact with scores of the infirm and his astuteness made him put
use every one of the latest methods as they became available: the
roentgen ray, with which he investigated bone changes in acromegaly, the
film camera, for the study of body movements in health and disease. The
results of these studies appeared in the monography Le Tonus des Muscles
striés (1937) with Nicolae Ionescu-Siseşti, Oskar Sager and Arthur
Kreindler, with a preface by Sir Charles Sherrington.
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Early in his career he published with the bacteriologist Victor Babeş and
the French pathologist Paul Oscar Blocq a much needed atlas on the
pathological histology of the nervous system. His description with Blocq
of a case of parkinsonian tremor due to tumour in the substantia nigra, in
1893, was the basis for Édouard Brissaud's theory that parkinsonism
occurs as a consequence of damage to the substantia nigra. With Paul
Blocq he was the first to describe senile plaques and with Romanian
neurologist confirmed in 1913 Hideyo Noguchi's discovery of Treponema
pallidum in the brain in patients with general paresis. His monumental
work La Cellule Nerveuse, with a preface by Santiago Ramon y Cajal,
appeared in 1909.
Dimitrie D. Gerota (17 July 1867 – 3 March 1939)
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Romanian anatomist, physician, radiologist, urologist, and an associated
member of the Romanian Academy from 1916.
Considered to be the first Romanian radiologist, Gerota initiated
academic radiology education in that country. In 1898, he wrote the book
'"The Röntgen Rays or the X-Rays". Some years later, he had to abandon
radiology because of radiodermatitis of the hand, which required
amputation.
In 1909, he established a sanatorium, where he practiced surgery, and
carried out charitable work. From 1913, he was a professor of surgical
anatomy and experimental surgery at the University of Bucharest.
Gerota researched the anatomy and physiology of the bladder and
appendix, and developed a method for injecting lymphatic vessels known
in textbooks as the "Gerota method".
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The renal fascia is sometimes called Gerota's fascia or Gerota's capsule after
him. Also, the Albarran-Ormond syndrome (an inflammatory retroperitoneal
fibrosis, named after urologists Joaquín Albarrán and John Kelso
Ormond) is also known as Gerota’s syndrome or Gerota’s fasciitis.
He was a famed surgeon and the founder of a large Bucharest
emergency-care hospital, now named the "Prof. Dr. Dimitrie Gerota
Military Hospital", as well as a museum of anatomical-surgical casts of
his creation.
Nicolae Paulescu (October 30, 1869 – July 17, 1931)
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was a Romanian physiologist, professor of medicine, and the discoverer
of insulin (which he termed pancreatine).
In 1897 he graduated with a Doctor of Medicine degree in Paris, and was
immediately appointed as assistant surgeon at the Notre-Dame du PerpétuelSecours Hospital. In 1900, Paulescu returned to Romania, where he
remained until his death (1931) as Head of the Physiology Department
of the University of Bucharest Medical School, as well as a Professor of
Clinical Medicine at the St. Vincent de Paul Hospital in Bucharest.
In 1916, he succeeded in developing an aqueous pancreatic extract which,
when injected into a diabetic dog, proved to have a normalizing effect on
blood sugar levels. After a gap during World War I, he resumed his
research and succeeded in isolating the antidiabetic pancreatic hormone
(pancreine).
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From April 24 to June 23, 1921, Paulescu published four papers at the
Romanian Section of the Society of Biology in Paris:
The effect of the pancreatic extract injected into a diabetic animal by way
of the blood.
The influence of the time elapsed from the intravenous pancreatic
injection into a diabetic animal.
The effect of the pancreatic extract injected into a normal animal by way
of the blood.
An extensive paper on this subject - Research on the Role of the Pancreas in
Food Assimilation - was submitted by Paulescu on June 22 to the Archives
Internationales de Physiologie in Liège, Belgium, and was published in the
August 1921 issue of this journal.
Eight months after Paulescu's works were published, doctor Frederick
Grant Banting and biochemist John James Richard Macleod from the
University of Toronto, Canada, published their paper on the successful
use of a pancreatic extract for normalizing blood sugar (glucose) levels
(glycemia) in diabetic dogs.
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Paulescu supporters think that their paper is a mere confirmatory paper,
saying that the paper made direct references to Paulescu's article but
misquoted that.
While Paulescu had patented his technique in Romania, no clinical use
resulted from his work. The work published by Banting, Best, Collip and
McLeod represented the injection of purified insulin extract into a
diabetic individual ameliorating symptoms of the disease. Not
surprisingly, Banting and Macleod received the 1923 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of insulin. International
recognition for Paulescu's contribution to the discovery of insulin came
only years later.
Ian Murray, a professor of physiology at the Anderson College of
Medicine in Glasgow, Scotland, the head of the department of Metabolic
Diseases at a leading Glasgow hospital, vice-president of the British
Association of Diabetes, and a founding member of the International
Diabetes Federation, wrote in an article for a 1971 issue of the Journal
of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
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"Insufficient recognition has been given to Paulesco,
the distinguished Roumanian scientist, who at the
time when the Toronto team were commencing their
research had already succeeded in extracting the
antidiabetic hormone of the pancreas and proving its
efficacy in reducing the hyperglycaemia in diabetic
dogs.“
Constantin Levaditi (1874—September 5, 1953)
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was a Romanian physician and microbiologist, a major figure in virology
and immunology (especially in the study of poliomyelitis and syphilis).
He studied at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy,
where he studied under Victor Babeş; In 1900, he was accepted by Ilya
Ilyich Mechnikov to work in his team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
Sometime after, Pierre Paul Émile Roux awarded him an independent
laboratory within the Institute.
With Karl Landsteiner, he discovered in 1909 the presence of the polio
virus in tissues other than nervous. He expanded on these studies during
a polomyelitis outbreak in Sweden, working with Scandinavian
researchers (among them Karl Oskar Medin);
He was able to isolate the poliovirus on tissue explant and made precious
observations on its characteristics. Together with , he authored the first
monograph dedicated to the disease, La Poliomyélite aiguë épidémique (1913).
His work was the basis for the development of vaccinea (by Jonas Salk
and Albert Sabin.
In his studies of syphilis, Levaditi introduced new techniques in serology,
and recommended bismuth in its treatment.
Constantin Ion Parhon (October 15, 1874—August 9, 1969)
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was a Romanian neuropsychiatrist and endocrinologist.
In 1909, he co-authored with the first book on endocrinology, Secreţiile
Interne ("Internal Secretions"). Later on, he published a Handbook of
Endocrinology, co-written with M. Goldstein and (3 volumes, 1945-1949).
Parhon published over 400 titles, and was known for his encyclopaedic
knowledge. Besides the afore-mentioned works, some of his other wellknown works are Old Age and Its Treatment (1948), The Age Biology (1955),
and Selected Works (5 volumes, 1954-1962).
Iuliu Haţieganu (1885-1972)
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was an eminent Romanian clinician, physician. He was the brother of
politician Emil Haţieganu.
He is especially famed for his research into tuberculosis.
Ana Aslan (born 1 January 1897, at Brăila - death 20 May 1988, at
Bucharest)
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was a Romanian biologist and physician. She is considered to be a
founding figure of gerontology and geriatrics in Romania. In 1952, under
the leadership of Prof. Dr. Ana Aslan, the Geriatric Institute in
Bucharest was founded. This Institute was the first of its kind in
Romania and was recognized by the World Health Organization.
The Gerovital H3 concept was introduced for the first time in 1957, in
Verona, Italy, on the occasion of the 4th International Gerontology
Congress. Many scientists from the USA, Germany, England, Japan, Italy,
Austria and Romania have studied and confirmed the effects of the
Gerovital H3 treatment suggested by Prof. Dr. Ana Aslan. In the 60’s the
Gerovital H3 treatment became a scientific certitude (which, readers
should note, is an oxymoron, though certainly pedantic enough to appear
credible to consumers), a high value anti-aging treatment.
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Notables such as French President Charles De Gaulle, U.S. President
John F. Kennedy, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Chinese
Chairman Mao Zedong, and Vietnamese Chairman Ho Chi Minh have
traveled to Romania to benefit this anti-aging therapy.
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Other well-known people, including actresses Marlene Dietrich, Lillian
Gish, the Gabor sisters, actors Charlie Chaplin and Kirk Douglas, and
artist Salvador Dalí have also followed the same path.They traveled to
Bucharest, where Dr. Aslan did her research with Gerovital H3. Once
discovered by these celebrities, Gerovital itself has become famous and is
now used in over twenty countries around the world for its renowned
anti-aging properties.
Ana Aslan’s research activity received many international distinctions.
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George Emil Palade (November 19, 1912 – October 7, 2008)
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was a Romanian cell biologist. In 1974, he shared the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine with Albert Claude and Christian de Duve, for
discovering the vacuole.
Palade also received the U.S. National Medal of Science in Biological
Sciences for "pioneering discoveries of a host of fundamental, highly
organized structures in living cells..." in 1986,(National Medal of
Science), and was previously elected a Member of the National Academy
of Science in 1961.
In 1952, Palade became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He was
a Professor at the Rockefeller Institute (1958-1973), Yale University
Medical School (1973-1990), and University of California, San Diego
(1990-2008).
At the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, Palade used electron
microscopy to study the internal organization of such cell structures as
mitochondria, chloroplasts, the Golgi apparatus, and others.
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His most important discovery was made while using an experimental
strategy known as a pulse-chase analysis. In the experiment Palade and
his colleagues were able to confirm an existing hypothesis that a
secretory pathway exists and that the Rough ER and the Golgi apparatus
function together.
He focused on Weibel-Palade bodies (a storage organelle unique to the
endothelium, containing von Willebrand factor and various proteins)
which he described together with the Swiss anatomist Ewald R. Weibel.
Nicolae Cajal (October 1, 1919, Bucharest- March 7, 2004)
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was a Romanian Jewish physician, academic, politician, and
philanthropist. He was President of the Jewish Communities' Federation
of Romania from 1994 to his death.
Cajal held a Ph.D. in virology and chaired the Ştefan S. Nicolau Virology
Research Center in Bucharest for years. He was a member of the Romanian
Academy, the Romanian Medical Sciences Academy, the British Royal
Society of Medicine, and the New York Academy of Sciences. From
1966, he was an expert for the World Health Organization.
Nicolae Cajal was an active member in civil society, involved in
improving awareness of war crimes carried in World War II Romania and
of the genocide in Transnistria and other occupied areas (see Romania
during World War II).
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Daily contact with scores of the infirm and his astuteness made him put
use every one of the latest methods as they became available: the
roentgen ray, with which he investigated bone changes in acromegaly, the
film camera, for the study of body movements in health and disease. The
results of these studies appeared in the monography Le Tonus des Muscles
striés (1937) with Nicolae Ionescu-Siseşti, Oskar Sager and Arthur
Kreindler, with a preface by Sir Charles Sherrington.
Early in his career he published with the bacteriologist Victor Babeş and
the French pathologist Paul Oscar Blocq a much needed atlas on the
pathological histology of the nervous system. His description with Blocq
of a case of parkinsonian tremor due to tumour in the substantia nigra, in
1893, was the basis for Édouard Brissaud's theory that parkinsonism
occurs as a consequence of damage to the substantia nigra. With Paul
Blocq he was the first to describe senile plaques and with Romanian
neurologist confirmed in 1913 Hideyo Noguchi's discovery of Treponema
pallidum in the brain in patients with general paresis. His monumental
work La Cellule Nerveuse, with a preface by Santiago Ramon y Cajal,
appeared in 1909.