Alex Sakula

Abstract

Chest physician, medical historian, and founder member of the editorial board of Journal of Medical Biography. Born June 26, 1917, in London, UK; died Dec 27, 2003, in Brighton, UK, aged 86 years. Alex Sakula had two highly successful careers. The first was as a physician who specialised in chest disease, and the second as a medical historian; altogether he published more than 200 papers. He continued working even after he lost his sight in his retirement years. Sakula obtained his medical degree in 1940 at the Middlesex Hospital, UK. In 1942 he completed postgraduate training, had his first paper published (in The Lancet) on the recovery of an infant from pneumococcal meningitis after treatment with sulphapyridine, and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. Sakula was posted to the Far East and became skilled in the management of tropical diseases during service in India, Burma, and Malaya. In 1945, he was sent to a jungle hospital on the River Kwai to help with the rehabilitation and recovery of former prisoners of war and internees. He returned to civilian life in 1947 and decided to specialise in chest medicine. He trained and worked at the Brompton Hospital in London. In 1950 he obtained his first job as chest physician at the Kingston Hospital, Kingston-on-Thames. He published extensively on tuberculosis, including an article on distinguishing between tuberculosis and pulmonary histoplasmosis (Tubercle 1953) and another on pneumo-peritoneum treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis complicated by pregnancy (British Journal of Tuberculosis, 1955). Then, as a consultant physician, he developed a comprehensive chest service for East Surrey and West Sussex. Although the region was a mixture of fairly prosperous urban and rural communities, Sakula's publications were often unusual and challenging clinical studies. Sakula was especially interested in lung cancer and occupational and environmental respiratory diseases. His investigation of the incidence of pneumoconiosis among workers handling Fuller's earth, an important local light industry, was published in Thorax in 1961. His description of mushroom grower's lung (British Medical Journal, 1967) was a pioneering study of an occupational health problem associated with the development of a new local industry. The respiratory troubles caused by the inhalation of actinomycete spores were almost eliminated by improving standards of ventilation and the use of protective clothing when handling raw materials. Sakula's original contributions on chest disease—studies of antitrypsin deficiency in lung disease (psittacosis) and various aspects of bronchial carcinoma—continued until his retirement, by which time he was already involved in research into the history of medicine. Denis Gibbs, a medical colleague and historian, told The Lancet “Alex had a deep interest in such a broad spectrum of subjects that must rank him as a polymath. His early biographical studies were of pioneers in chest medicine whom he felt had not received the recognition due to them.” His first biographical essay was of the 18th century Viennese physician Leopold Auenbrugger, whose findings on the use of percussion in diagnosing chest diseases were published in 1761. That work was ignored for some 40 years until Jean Nicolas Corvisart, personal physician to Napoleon, revived the technique in 1808; it then gained worldwide acceptance. Sakula's next subject in the history of diagnostic technology for diseases of the lungs was the 19th century French physician Pierre Piorry, a pioneer in percussion who invented the pleximeter to help outline the internal organs. Sakula gradually broadened his field of biographical studies. One of his works was devoted to the portraits, paintings, and sculptures at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. He was also a great admirer of Sir William Osler, and was a member of the Osler Club of London, becoming its president in 1984. Sakula became diabetic in later years and his sight was destroyed by glaucoma. While investigating systems that would allow him to continue to read, he became aware of WilliamMoon, an early Victorian innovator and, in Sakula's opinion, another neglected pioneer. Moon helped improve the plight of blind people in Victorian England by inventing a reading system based on embossed print. In 1998, Sakula lectured on Moon at a conference in Paris on The Blind in History and The History of the Blind, marking the invention of Louis Braille's six-dot system of reading. Sakula's wife Rene, who he married in 1951, and their four children survive him.