Category: Physicians of Note
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Dr. Monty Perl—Pioneering Australian venereologist
Michael AbramsonMelbourne, Australia Mathias Michal (known as Monty) Perl was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 6 January 1873, the first son and second child of Michael Mathias Perl and Miriam (Mary) Davis. His father had arrived in Port Phillip aboard the Arabian in 1853 and established a successful business as a general merchant, wholesale…
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Eugène J. Woillez (1811–1882)
Eugène Woillez was born in the town of Montreuil sur Mer, near Calais, in 1811, one year before Napoleon committed the colossal error of invading Russia. As a young man, Woillez studied the sciences and arts, and spent his leisure painting with watercolors, playing musical instruments, and dabbling in lithography under the pseudonym Ozelli (his…
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The legacy of Armand Trousseau
JMS PearceHull, England “Every science touches art at some points—every art has its scientific side; the worst man of science is he who is never an artist, and the worst artist is he who is never a man of science.”– Armand Trousseau Trousseau’s sign is familiar to medical students as the carpopedal spasm caused by…
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Additional French surgeons
By the close of the fourteenth century, France emerged as the preeminent center of European surgical practice. Its early pioneers included Theodoric Borgognoni of Lucca (1205–1296), who played a pivotal role in elevating surgery from a craft to a respected medical discipline; Guido Lanfranc of Milan (1250–1315), who further refined surgical techniques; and Henri de…
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William P. Murphy Jr., MD: Physician-inventor
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “…An unqualified success.”– Dr. Murphy on the testing of blood bags during the Korean War It is perhaps no coincidence that the son of the physician who revolutionized the treatment of pernicious anemia should likewise have been an inventor. By the time he died in 2023 at the age of 100, Dr.…
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Dr. Frank Billings (1854–1932), physician and educator
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Dr. Frank Billings (1854–1932) was “one of the most conspicuous figures in American medicine,” rembered for developing the doctrine of focal infection from bacteria of the Streptococcus pneumococcus group via the teeth, tonsils, and other portals.1-3 Born in Wisconsin, he worked as a young man as a farmer and schoolmaster before…
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William Murrell and nitroglycerin
Born in London in 1853, William Murrell was the first to use nitroglycerin in the treatment of angina pectoris. Son of a barrister, he received his medical training at the University College Hospital in London and then taught physiology there. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Royal College…
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David Macbride: On scurvy and the art of tanning
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel David Macbride (1726–1778) of the county of Antrim, Northern Ireland, was an Irish physician who contributed to the treatment of scurvy1 and to the art of tanning.2 In his youth, he was apprenticed to a local surgeon and served for a short time as a surgeon’s mate on a Navy hospital…
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The “Republic of Letters” and Jacob Spon
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The European intellectual community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was interested in establishing a metaphysical “Republic of Letters” (Res Publica Litterarum or Res Publica Literaria).1-2 It was to be “a great and swirling progression of learning”3 such as that in ancient Greece and function as a network of scholars…
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Hieronymus Gaubius
Born in Germany near Heidelberg as the son of a cloth merchant, Hieronymus David Gaubius (1705–1780) was one of the many students of the renowned Herman Boerhaave. He became his immediate successor and like him had studied medicine in the Netherlands at the University of Harderwijk, which charged low fees but did not have a…