George Huntington (1850-1916) - an American physician

George Huntington, born on April 9, 1850, in East Hampton, Long Island, New York, hailed from a family deeply ingrained in the medical field.

Growing up in the tranquil and secluded village of East Hampton, situated at the far eastern tip of Long Island, George inherited a medical legacy from both his grandfather and father, both practitioners in the field.

After completing his education at the Clinton Academy in his hometown, George Huntington embarked on his medical studies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York in 1868. His medical school thesis focused on 'Opium.'

Upon returning to his hometown, he initiated his medical practice and promptly documented cases of dementia and chorea in middle-aged individuals, recognizing a familial pattern indicative of autosomal dominant transmission.

In 1872, George Huntington provided the initial comprehensive description of the disease, drawing from his investigations of multiple generations within a single family displaying similar symptoms. He officially identified and delineated Huntington's disease among residents of East Hampton, Long Island.

It wasn't until George Huntington's detailed account in 1872 that Huntington's disease gained wider recognition. In 1874, he resumed his medical practice in Dutchess County, New York.

George Huntington (1850-1916) - an American physician

Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome

In the early part of the 20th century the disease of tics was regarded as a psychiatric disorder and from 1920 those suffering from tics were referred for psychoanalysis. After 1970 the disease of Gilles de la Tourette experienced a revival. The American couple Shapiro rediscovered the disorder as a neurological disease and named it the Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome.

The first comprehensive description of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome as a neurological condition dates back to 1885 when Georges Gilles de la Tourette published his case series of nine patients sharing the clinical triad of tics, echolalia, and coprolalia. In his article, Gilles de la Tourette presented some earlier descriptions of this disorder.

Georges Albert Edouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette (1857-1904), a French neurologist and pupil of Jean Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. His father was a merchant but belonged to a family of physicians. Georges lacked discipline and had a difficult character with unpredictable mood swings. He was peculiar, but exhibited a keen intelligence

At age 16, he started medical school in Poitiers, France. His mother wouldn’t let him study in Paris because she thought that the city of love had too many temptations for young Georges.

He has gained common recognition through his description of the 'Maladie des Tics'. This complex neuropsychiatric disorder, later known as the 'Tourette's syndrome', nowadays is accepted as a specific entity of movement disorders.

He published scientific works on epilepsia, neurasthenia and syphilitic myelitis. He died on 22 May 1904 with advanced dementia at the Lausanne Psychiatric Hospital in Cery.
Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome

Short biography of Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen (1841-1912)

He was well known for his pioneer study of leprosy - a prominent disease in the history of human sufferings.

Armauer Hansen was the discoverer of the causative agent of leprosy. Armauer Hansen was born in 29 July 1841 in Bergen, Norway. He entered the University of Christiana to study medicine in 1859. He obtained his degree in medicine in 1866, and completed his internship at the National Hospital in Christiania. After about two years at Bergen’s Leprosy Hospital he underwent a period of study in Vienna, where he became familiar with the ‘germ theory’ of disease.

 

Returning to Bergen, Hansen was by now convinced that leprosy was a specific communicable disease. In 1873, he discovered rod-shaped bodies later identified as M. leprae. He published his observations in 1874. By improving his staining technique in 1879, he was able to show great numbers of rod-shaped bacteria typically aggregated in parallel.

In 1880 Hansen named the organism causing leprosy as Bacillus leprae. When Lehman and Neumann erected the new genus Mycobacterium in 1896, it was transferred to this genus and henceforth ahs be known as Mycobacterium leprae.

He believed that the bacillus was the etiological agent of leprosy, which proved to be true. Hansen’s publication from 1874, Preliminary Contributions to the Characteristics of Leprosy, is the earliest description of a microorganism as the cause of a chronic disease.
Short biography of Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen (1841-1912)

Democedes of Croton (fl c 550 BC)

Croton was a scientific metropolis thanks to excellent medical school, run by Alcmaeon for some time. To this city – Democedes arrived to practice medicine for five years (c.530-525 BC).

Democedes of Croton, son of Calliphon, a priest of Asclepius in Cnidus, was one of the most famous physicians of the sixth century B.C., and practiced first in Aegina and Athens, then at the Court of Polycrates in Samos.

Democedes of Croton left bios native city to escape a harsh tempered father and went to Aegina. Within the first year after settling there, he excelled the rest of the physicians, although he had no equipment nor any medical implements. Soon the Athenians hired him away for 100 minas, only to be topped by Polycrates of Samos who offered two talents. Thus he came to Samos, and not least because of this man the physicians of Croton were well-respected.

His interests seem to have inclined to surgery rather than to medicine. Democedes once healed, without further trauma, a sprained ankle that Darius had received while hunting and that his Egyptian physicians were unable to treat. He treated Darius by Greek methods, replacing the violent manipulations of the Egyptians by milder remedies. At first he enabled Darius to sleep and shortly afterwards was able to restore completely the function of the ankle. He was richly rewarded and rose from a slave’s misery to become an influential personality at the Persian court, but his liberty was not restored.
Democedes of Croton (fl c 550 BC)

Mondino de Luzzi

The dissection of human corpses had only taken place in Alexandria, and even then its practice was brief, perhaps lasting no more than a hundred years.

Mondino de Luzzi (1275-1326), usually known by his Latin name of Mundinus, must be given the credit of reviving the study of the anatomy of the human body by systematic dissection, which had remained dormant for some 1500 years since the days of the great Alexandrian anatomists, Erasistratus and Herophilus.

Born and educated in the northern Italian city of Bologna, famous for its university, Mundinus receiving his medical degree in 1290 and becoming Professor of both Anatomy and Surgery at the university, joint chair which became traditional and which persisted for the next two centuries at this and other Italian university. He lived at a time when the taboos surrounding human dissection were beginning to weaken.

Mundinus distinguished himself by his systematic work in anatomy and by the fact that he carried out the dissection himself rather than allowing someone else to do them for him as was to become the usual practice.

His anatomical Anathomia, written in 1326, is a landmark on the history of anatomy. In content it is akin to modern manuals of dissection, and it became the most popular anatomical treatise of the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; it passed through about thirty printed editions and was still in use even after the works of the Renaissance anatomist began to appear.
Mondino de Luzzi

Maurice Raynaud (1834-1881)

Maurice Raynaud was a physician with a particular interest in the history of medicine, and went on to get a further doctorate in letters for his historical research.

In his doctorial thesis published in 1862 Local Asphyxia and Symmetrical Gangrene of the Extremities, Raynaud described which was later named Raynaud’s disease. Raynaud’s disease is a disorder of peripheral blood vessels in which blood flow in the fingers and toes stops when they are exposed to cold.

Auguste Gabriel Maurice Raynaud

In 1863, Raynaud published a book entitles Doctors of the Time of Moliere. A Doctors of the Time of Moliere was well-respected text.

He did not have a particularly notable professional career thereafter, although he was regarded as a fine clinical and was elected to the French Academy of Medicine.
Maurice Raynaud (1834-1881)

Hugh of Lucca, founder of the bologna surgical school

Little known directly of Hugh of Lucca (1160-1257), founder of the Bologna school, but his contribution have come down in the writings of his most distinguished disciple the Dominican friar Theodoric (1205-1296).

Hugh of Lucca, a bold and creative surgeon and teacher who left no written record of his life or work. He also known as Ugo Borgognoni was born in Lucca in the second half of the twelfth century and lived in Bologna after 1214, the year he signed a contract as medico condotto.

From 1218 to c. 1221, he accompanied the Bolognese army on a Crusade in Egypt and the Holy Land; he died in Bologna in 1257.

The Chirurgia of Theodoric, written by Theodoric which was completed in 1267, is built about the teachings of Hugh. The great contribution of this master was the ‘dry’ treatment of wounds. Growing out comments by Galen, which were distorted in the translation of the Arabs, had come the doctrine that suppuration was necessary to the healing of wounds.
Hugh of Lucca, founder of the bologna surgical school

James Parkinson

James Parkinson’s was born on April 11, 1755 to John and Mary Parkinson. They resided at No. 1 Hoxton Square in the parish of St. Leonard’s Shoredicth, Middlesex County, England, where Parkinson lived his entire life.

He was born into the medical tradition, as his father John Parkinson was an apothecary and surgeon in Hoxton for many years.  His father had an enduring influence on him as a mentor, as James greatly valued the knowledge on anatomy that his father emphasized.

Parkinson studied at the London Hospital Medical College for six months in1776 as one of the school’s earliest medical students. He became an apprenticeship with his father which lasted 6 years before received his diploma from the Royal College of Surgeon.

James Parkinson made significant contributions to the medical literature beyond the Essay on the Shaking Palsy. These included books, monographs, and cases studies written for physicians and the lay public, some of which are worth mentioning.

He published in 1799 two editions of a medical text titled Medical Admonitions Addressed to Families Respecting the Practice of Domestic Medicine and the Prescription of Health.

In this book, James had tabulated the symptoms of diseases and the extent of risk of each illness in order for layperson to understand the distinction of one disease from another.

He became a distinguished physician and the first recipient of the honorary gold medal of the Royal College of Surgeon in1822.

James Parkinson died from stroke at the age of 69 on December 21, 1824, at No. 3 Pleasant Row, Kingsland Road, Hoxton.
James Parkinson

Biography of Ali Abbas al-Majusi (925-994)

Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi was known in the Latin as Ali Abbas. As his name, Majusi, means ‘Magus’ it is believed that he came from a Persian Zoroastrian family.

He dedicated his work to Prince Adud ad-Dawla and it is assumed that he worked in the hospital as a physician. He is one of the three greatest physicians of the Eastern Caliphate. 

His only work, Kitab kamil as-sina a attibiya (The Perfect Book of Medical Art also called al-Kitab al-Maliki.

The book is more systematic and concise than Razi’s Hawi but more practical than Avicenna Qanun. The book is written in two parts with twenty chapters on medicine, the first half on theory and the second half on the practice.

The book also contains neuroscience and psychology. Ali Abbas al-Majusi described the neuroanatomy, neurobiology and neurophysiology of the brain.

He too discussed various mental disorders, including sleeping sickness, memory loss,hypochondriasis, coma, hot and cold meningitis, vertigo epilepsy, love sickness, and hemiplegia.
Biography of Ali Abbas al-Majusi (925-994)

Biography of Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle born in 384 BC at Stagira, a Greek town not far from the borders of the semi barbarian kingdom of Macedonia.

Aristotle grew up under the influence of the Hippocratic tradition of medicine which is father practiced and which may well have influenced him but its emphasis on empirical investigation and respect for the evidence of concrete particularities.

Aristotle arrived in Athens in 367 to join Plato’s Academy as a student. He stayed, so the tradition goes, for twenty years and these two decades formed the first great phase of his intellectual career.

Aristotle followed closely after Hippocrates and although not himself a physician, had a profound effect on medical thought and practice for succeeding centuries.

Indeed he can regarded as one of the greatest scientific geniuses the world has ever seen.

Although Aristotle never dissected a human being, he carried out anatomical studies of a wide range of animals, laid the foundation of embryology by studying the developing chick, and gave an accurate account of the life of bees.

He laid the basis of the doctrine of evolution, describe a ladder of nature ascending through lower plants, higher plants, insects, fish, mammals to man.

This period of Aristotle’s life came to an end with the death of Plato and the succession of Plato’s nephew Speusippus to the headship of the academy.

He left Athens, accompanied by Xenocrates and went to Atarnea, in Mysia, to his friend and fellow disciple, Hermias, the ruler of that town , whose sister or niece, Pyhtias, h subsequently married.

After the fall and death of Hermias (345 BC) Aristotle went to Mytilene. From there he returned to Athens and open the school of rhetoric, in which he set up as an opponent to Isocrates.
Biography of Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Biography of Hippocrates

Biography of Hippocrates
Hippocrates is referred to ‘father of medicine’ in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic school of medicine.

Hippocrates was born to Heraclides, a physician and Praxitela, daughter of Phenaretis in year of 460 BC on the Greek island of Cos. He learned medicine from his own father and grandfather.

He also studied other subject with Democritus the Abderite and Gorgias of Leontini. Democritus was famous Greek materialist philosopher while Gorgias was famous philosopher and rhetorician at that time.

Hippocrates also trained at asklepieion (healing temple) of Kos and took lessons from Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. Herodicus was Greek physician famous as the first person use of therapeutic exercise for treatment of disease and maintenance of health. Herodicus was described as gymnastic master.

Hippocrates later became a famous physician and teacher of medicine. He was regarded as the greatest physician of his time. He based his medical practice on observations and on the study of the human body.

He held the belief that illness had a physical and a rational explanation. Hippocrates held a belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts. Hippocrates was the first to give the physician an independent standing, separate from the cosmological speculator, or nature philosopher. Hippocrates confined the medical man to medicine.

He soon developed an Oath of Medical Ethics for physician. He died in 377 BC at the age of 90 years old. Some says at the age of 83 or 106 years He lies buried between Gyrton and Larissa.
Biography of Hippocrates

Kitab al-Tasrif by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi

Kitab al-Tasrif by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi
Kitab al-Tasrif is an encyclopedia on medicine and surgery. It was written and completed in year 1000 AD by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi.

Abu al-Qasim was known as a father of modern surgery. He was born at Medinat al-Zahra near Cordoba on 936 A.D and died in 1013 AD. He descended from Ansar tribe of Arabia who had settled earlier in Spain. Kitab Al-Tasrif was his outstanding contribution in medicine.

Kitab al-Tasrif known also known as ‘Concessio ei data qui componere haud valet’ in Europe and it’s in 30 volume work covering anatomy, diseases, nutrition, surgery, medicine, orthopedic, ophthalmology and pharmacology. Abu al-Qasim also wrote the importance of doctor-patient relationship.

In his last and the largest volume of Al-Tasrif was nothing less than the greatest achievement of medieval surgery. It was the first independent surgical treatise ever written in detail. It included many pictures of surgical instruments, most invented by Abu Al-Qasim himself, and explanations of their use.

He was the first medical author to provide illustrations of instruments used in surgery. His treatise of surgery contains approximately 200 such drawings ranging from a tongue depressor and a tooth extractor to a catheter and elaborate obstetric device. He is a great surgeon in medieval Islam and also a great educationist based on his substantial section in the Al-Tasrif to child education and behavior table etiquette school curriculum and academic specialization.

It was translated to Latin by Gerald of Cremona in 12th century. The last edition was that of John Channing in Oxford (1778) this contains both the original Arabic text and its Latin translation on alternative pages.
Kitab al-Tasrif by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi