Friday, February 4, 2011

Bernhard Riedel

Bernhard Riedel
Bernhard Moritz Carl Ludwig Riedel (1846 - 1916) German surgeon and pioneer in the surgical treatment of appendicitis and cholecystitis. He was the first surgeon to perform choledochoduodenostomy, which is the anastomosis of the common bile duct to the duodenum. His name is associated with Riedel's thyroiditis (ligneous thryroiditis, struma fibromatosis, or invasive fibrous thyroiditis) which is a rare chronic inflammation of the thyroid gland, resulting in replacement with fibrous tissue, causing difficulty in swallowing and breathing, but mostly with euthyroid status. Riedel's lobe is a tongue shaped hepatic process often found over the gallbladder in cases of chronic cholecytitis. Riedel's tumor is an infrequently used term for chronic pancreatitis. In his old age, he underwent amputation of one of his legs due to atherosclerotic complications, but that didn't stop him from being actively involved in medical activities.

William Allen Sturge

William Allen Sturge
William Allen Sturge (1850 - 1919) British physician and archeologist, who was one of the doctors who first described Sturge-Weber syndrome (also known as encephalotrigeminal angimatosis), a rare congenital nervous and skin disorder, associated with port-wine stains, glaucoma, seizures, mental retardation, and ipsilateral leptomeningeal angioma. His first wife, Emily Bowell, was one of the first women physicians of England. After her death, he married one his nurses. Sturge was a keen collector of archeological specimens, and the later part of his life after retiring from medicine was devoted to archeology. William Allen Sturge had no children.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Ferdinand-Jean Darier

Ferdinand Darier
Ferdinand-Jean Darier (1856 - 1938) French pathologist and dermatologist, considered "the father of modern dermatology in France". His name is associated with many dermatological diseases such as follicular keratosis (an autosomal dominant genetically inherited disease of the skin, also called Darier's disease) and Darier's sign, which is the appearance of  itchy, red & swollen skin lesions after stroking of an area of skin, in subjects suffering from urticaria pigmentosa or systemic mastocytosis. In later age, Darier retired to a small village on the outskirts of Paris and was mayor of the place for ten years. He wrote classic textbooks on dermatology and was involved as the editor of the most famous encyclopedia on dermatology in the french language.