For the Good of Humanity: Ludwik Rajchman, Medical Statesman (original) (raw)
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The fate of the Warsaw Ghetto Medical Faculty
2012
The Warsaw Ghetto, in existence from 1940 to 1943, was the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. The 400,000-500,000 Jews incarcerated within its walls were deprived not only of food and medicine but also of education. Nonetheless, Jewish physicians served the community as befits their profession, and against all odds obtained permission to conduct a course on sanitary measures to combat epidemics, which they transformed into a veritable, clandestine medical school. This review follows the fate of the school faculty, with an emphasis on the achievements of the survivors.
Acta medico-historica Rigensia
This study explores the effects the political “Thaw” of 1956 had on the ability of the Pomeranian Medical University of Szczecin, Poland (PUM) to join and contribute to the international production and circula- tion of medical knowledge in the years 1956–1968. It gives an overview of the challenges PUM had to face in its relationships with the state apparatus that controlled access to foreign networks. It also discusses the cases of three PUM professors, namely: Bolesław Górnicki (1908–1998; head of Paediatrics), Witold Starkiewicz (1906–1978; head of Ophthalmology), and Kazimierz Stojałowski (1903–1995; head of Pathological Anatomy). For the first of them, Szczecin was a nine-year episode in a prosperous academic career closely tied with Warsaw; the latter two were among PUM’s founding staff and stayed in Szczecin till retirement. The study reveals how personality, political and confessional worldview, strength of personal attachment to PUM, and diplomatic skills exhibited by each ...
Botkin, eleventh child of tee-merchant Peter Kononovich Botkin and Anna Ivanovna Postnikova, was bringing up by his old brother Vasily, a writer, which was narrowly connected with a group of famous intellectuals, such as Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky, Alexander Iva-novich Gercen, and Timofey Nikolaevich Granovsky. Two other Botkin brothers, Mikhail and Dmitry, were famous artists. At first he educated at home, after that in private pension Enessa (1847-50) and in Moscow University (1850-55), where he was influenced by a physiologist Ivan Timofeevich Glebov and a surgeon Fedor Ivanovich Inosemtsev. In 1853 he met with Ivan Mi-khailovich Sechenov, whose scientific ideas were always not far for him. In 1855 Botkin went voluntarily to Crimea, where he worked under the direction of Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov in mil-itary hospital for 3 months. Erisman (Russian name Fedor Fedorovich), son of pastor Johann Friedrich Erisman and Wilhelmina Benker, after the gymnasium of Aarau attended Zurich University (1861-65), Würz-burg and Prague Universities (1863-64). In 1865 he became to work in Zurich ophthalmologic clinic and graduated MD (1867). In the same time he made acquaintance of Russian revolution-ary-immigrants, and under their influence he entered into the rows of the First International (1870-74) and moved to Russia (1869). Since 1868 to 1878 he was married on Nadejda Prokofi-evna Suslova, one of first Russian physician-woman. Manassein was ninth son of former officer Avxenty Petrovich Manassein and Maria Pe-trovna Dronova. After Kazan gymnasium Manassein studied under pressing of his father in law school in Petersburg (1853-56), but he leaved them, so he wants to be a physician. His brother Nikolay Manassein was a minister of justice (1887-93). Manassein attended Moscow University (1857-60), Kazan University (1860), Derpt (now Tartu) University (1861). All his transitions from one university to other were determined by the persecution for the participation of student political actions. He finished his medical education in Medical-Surgical Academy, Petersburg (1864-66). After that he specialized in clinics by Sergey Petrovich Botkin (1866-69). In 1870-72 he attended Germany and Austria. Molleson was born in the family of mining department official man, attended Kazan gymnasium, Kazan University (1860-65), where he was influenced by supporter of preventive medicine Professor of pathology Alexander Vasil’evich Petrov. Since 1865 his almost a half-century activity as Zemstvo physician started, and one coincided with a history of Russian Zem-stvo medicine. During this period he was an ideologist and an active organizer of free preventive social medicine in different parts of Imperia. Ostroumov, son of priest, attended theological seminary and Moscow University (1865-70), since 1870 worked as a physician near Moscow, then in clinic of Professor Grigorii Antono-vich Zakhar’in due to which in 1871 has been left at the university. Zakhar’in, a son of poverty landlord, former cavalier-officer, Anton Zakhar’in, and edu-cated Jewess Heiman, studied in Saratov gymnasium and Moscow University (1847-52). Since 1852 Zakhar’in worked as an ordinary physician in faculty clinic of therapeutics, which was di-rected by Professor Alexander Ivanovich Over. In 1854 he graduated MD on the theme «De puerperii morbis». Since 1854 to 1859 Zakhar’in was in Europe, where he updated his knowledge in such spheres of clinical medicine as pediatrics, gynecology, urology, otolaryngology and oth-ers. Together Sergey Petrovich Botkin he attended Rudolf Virchow, Ludwig Traube, Johann Oppolzer, Ernst-Felix Hoppe-Seyler, and Joseph Škoda in Berlin, Armand Trousseau and Claude Bernard in Paris. He was most of all inspired by Virchow and Rene Laennec ideas. Coming to Russia back, he became to read the lectures of semiotics and general therapeutics in Moscow University (since 1860). After the death of Over in 1864 Zakhar’in headed the clinics and be-came to put into practice the laboratorial investigations and the methods of physical inspection of patients (percussion and auscultation). He was a supporter for the differentiation of clinical med-icine, distinguishing two wards for child illnesses (1866) and some of beds for female illnesses (1875) in his clinics. Zakhar’in read the works of European scientists regularly and interested in the bacteriology in last period of his life.
Folia morphologica, 2011
Professor Olgierd Narkiewicz was born on 21 October 1925 in Vilnius. He came from the Samogitia gentry, whose family hearth was in the ancestral estate of Szołopiany in Taurogi County, known from Sienkiewicz's "Trilogy". It has been the home of the Narkiewicz family since the sixteenth century. His father, Dr. Adolf Narkiewicz, was a local doctor and for some time the Chief Medical Officer in Vilnius. His mother, Anna, was from the well-known Vilnius family of Umiastowski. Olgierd Narkiewicz began his education in Vilnius where he attended King Sigmundus Augustus Gymnasium-famous before the war. When the Second World War broke out he was to start the third grade. He did the so-called "little baccalaurean" in the times of Soviet occupation of the Vilnius region. He received a Polish school-leaving examination certificate attending a clandestine education. At this time his teachers, among others, were Stanisław Hiller and Stanisław Stomma. He used his knowledge of five languages in the resistance movement, working on reports from the radio watch for the underground press. The patriotic attitude of the family met repression: his father was arrested in 1941 by the Soviets and died in Gorkie prison, and his uncle Franciszek Umiastowski was killed in Katyń. In 1944, after the Red Army reoccupied Vilnius, Olgierd Narkiewicz concealed himself in a mental hospital. Thanks to skilful simulation and the kindness of the Polish doctors, including Dr Janina Hurynowicz, he managed to save himself from deportation to the Soviet Union. Soon afterwards, thanks to repatriation, he went first to Lodz and then to Lublin. After the end of the war he started study
The celebrity of Polish and French medicine – Józef Julian Franciszek Feliks Babiński (1857–1932)
Polish Archives of Internal Medicine, 2007
The paper presents a biography of Polish and French medical scientist, Józef Julian Franciszek Feliks Babiński (1857-1932), a son of Polish exiles to France after the unsuccessful insurrection against the Russian occupants. Born in Paris, Babiński considered Poland as his own home-country, being faithful and grateful citizen of France, his adopted country. He made his neurological department in Paris, a world famous medical centre at the turn of the 20th century. Currently for every student of medicine or physician practitioner, the name of Babiński immediately associates with the "toe phenomenon" (phénomène des orteils). The discovery of this "sign" (1896) is the crowning point of Babiński's work in semiology. He was a co-author of discoveries known under eponym names of syndromes: Babinski-Nageotte, Babinski-Fröhlich, Anton-Babinski and many others. Babiński emphasized his Polish origins, expressing his feeling towards two home countries (1922), "I am proud to have two countries-to one, I owe the knowledge, to the other, the country of my ancestors, the elements of my Polish soul…".
Progress in Health Sciences
Dr Joseph Melzak, was born in Poland , September 1903 and died in September 1972 in Haifa, Israel. He joined the Polish army in the First World War. He studied medicine after the world war and became a neurologist. He was trained by the father of Polish neurology, Prof Edward Flatau (1868- 1932). During the second world war Joseph escaped from Poland . joined the Polish free army which became part of the British 8th army. He worked as a physician and surgeon in the British army in Italy and in Palestine. After the war he came to the UK and worked in the field of neuro-rehabilitation and eventually settled at Stoke Mandeville Hospital , and worked under the father of the comprehensive rehabilitation of the spinally injured: Sir Ludwig Guttmann (1899-1980). He retired from the National Health Service in the UK and immigrated to Israel, and worked for Community Health Organization, in Haifa. His academic publications are well known to those who work with spinal cord injuries.
Contemporary European History, 2016
The article analyses forms of international scientific exchange practised by Polish medical experts around 1900. Applying a transnational historiographical approach it asks whether and how the Polish nation mattered to Polish bacteriologists and epidemiologists travelling abroad or communicating with colleagues internationally. It shows that in the 1880s and 1890s the Warsaw bacteriologist Odo Bujwid rarely connected his scientific knowledge to Polish national causes but rather benefited from imperial structures. What was more, he transcended the borders between the two nationalised bacteriological thought styles of Louis Pasteur on the one hand and Robert Koch on the other. Bujwid thus eluded a clear link between science and nationalism. His practices of international scientific exchange can be called ‘transnational’. When a Polish state was re-established in 1918 bacteriology and epidemiology became closely entwined with Polish state- and nation-building. Polish medical scientists now worked for Polish state institutions and acted as state representatives in the international arena. International exchange and border-crossing scientific mobility now served, first of all, to underline Polish statehood and to present it as a modern and civilised country. These practices of international scientific exchange can be described as ‘Olympic Internationalism’.
Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences
The ‘National Feeling’ in Sciences. Bohemian Professors at the Medical Faculties of Vienna and Prague Universities: Mediators in National and International Networking. Symposium: International Networks, Exchange and Circulation of Knowledge in Life Sciences, 18th to 20th centuries. XXIIè Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences (Beijing, 2005), edited by Brigitte Hoppe, Soňa Štrbáňová, Nicolas Robin, in: Archives Internationales d´Histoire des Sciences (Academie Internationale d´Histoire des Sciences) 56, 156–157 (2006), 265–278. The medical faculty of the University of Prague, "stepping-stone to Vienna" as the Irish ophthalmologist William Robert Wilde formulated in 1843, was for the medical faculty of the University of Vienna its main partner for scientific cooperation in the Habsburg Empire and at the same time its greatest rival. Medical professors who were trained in Vienna taught at the University of Prague and Prague sent its outstanding medical professors to Vienna. For medical students in Prague – according to the Habsburg historian Jean Bérenger – to pursue a career in Vienna was regarded as the ultimate recognition at this time. After 1830 the Bohemians Count Anton Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky, cabinet-minister of the Habsburg Monarchy and Baron Ludwig von Türkheim, Court Commissioner for Medical Studies, began in Vienna to promote particularly talented young men from Bohemia such as Joseph Škoda, Ferdinand Hebra and Carl Rokitansky. In his study “Austria: Its literary, scientific and medical institutions. With notes upon the present state of science” Wilde confirmed the dominance of Bohemian medical students and young doctors in Vienna. "Not only are the Bohemian or Slavonian race the most zealous cultivators of medicine, but in talent and reputation they far surpass the others, and form a large majority of the professors". However, it has not yet been fully researched how much the Habsburg Monarchy valued this intellectual potential or whether they regarded it as a future threat. According to their autobiographies these young Bohemian doctors were indeed confronted with considerable resistance. Precisely because of this, Rokitanky, meanwhile the leading liberal pathologist in Vienna, not only succeeded in establishing a scientific and political network in Vienna but also in creating an expansion of medical knowledge to all universities of the Empire, of Europe and America which led to international recognition of the Vienna Medical School. Because of his international approach, seldom for the time, and his leading positions in academic institutions, Rokitansky, living in the multicultural city of Vienna, defined his own nationality neutrally as "Austrian". At the beginning of the rise of national conflicts in the Monarchy he could therefore not be captured either by the intellectual nationalism of the Germans or the Czechs at the Universities of Vienna and Prague. He realised that the international reputation of the sciences, particularly medicine, could by threatened by the rise of nationalism. The ideology of national thinking in sciences of the German pathologist Rudolf Virchow was regarded with mistrust by his Austrian colleague. In 1862 Rokitanky already warned in his brochure "Contemporary Questions relevant to the University" of any national consolidation of studies which would result in a division of the "solidarity of science". "The more intensive national feelings are", he added, "the less success an academic institution will have". The Sciences as an "international undertaking" should preserve the consciousness of unity in the "academic world" confirmed the historian, Friedrich Paulsen fourty years later, when academic nationalism had reached already its first peak. In the midst of progress – despite escalating conflicts – Czechs as well as German scientists still believed that the preservation of humanity was the most important goal in medicine.