Saturday, January 29, 2011

Nikolaus Friedreich

Nikolaus Friedreich
Nikolaus Friedreich (1825 - 1882) French physician and pathologist, whose father and grandfather were also well known doctors in their time. Friedreich is particularly noted for his contributions to neurology, where he was the first to describe a progressive hereditary condition affecting the spinal cord and peripheral nerves, causing ataxia, now known as Friedreich's ataxia. His name is also associated with Friedreich's foot, or pes cavus (high arched foot) as is more commonly known. He also described Friedreich's sign, which is the sudden collapse of previously distended cervical veins during diastole, as a result of adherent pericardium. Along with the anatomist Leopold Auerbach (of the Auerbach's plexus fame) he described the Friedreich-Auerbach disease, a congenital hypertrohic disorder affecting the tongue, ears and facial features.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Dennis Parsons Burkitt

Dennis Burkitt
Dennis Parsons Burkitt (1911 - 1993) Irish surgeon, most famous for his description of the eponymous Burkitt's Lymphoma, which he did when he was working as a surgeon in rural Africa. As a child, Burkitt lost his right eye in an accident, and was later denied employment as a surgeon for this reason. He was also a devout christian and had missionary leanings for his desire to work in Africa. Later in life, he settled in Britain, and made his second significant contribution to medicine by associating the lack of adequate fiber in the diet with many modern diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. His popular book on the subject, Don't Forget Fiber in Your Diet became an international bestseller.

Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer
Alois Alzheimer (1864 - 1915) German psychiatrist and neuropathologist, credited with the first known description of presenile dementia, which his famous colleague Emil Kraepelin, would later name as Alzheimer's disease. Franz Nissl, another noted German and neuropathologist, was his close collaborator and friend in many of his research activities. Alzheimer also gave a detail description of the histopathological changes involved in general paralysis of the insane, before the causative organism of syphilis was discovered. Alzheimer's descriptions of histopathology in presenile dementia are unparalleled, and so thorough that even to this day his criteria for diagnosis of Alzheimer's stand valid. Alzhemier's prototype patient for the eponymous disease was a woman named Auguste Deter, who was admitted to the hospital where he worked, and died five years later at the age of 56. Autopsy studies on her brain were responsible for the first detailed description of the changes involved in the disease, particularly the presence of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.