Founders of pediatric pathology: Petre Florescu, 1944-2010.

Abstract

I first met Dr Petre Florescu in 1995 on my initial visit to Romania as part of a medical assistance program. It quickly became apparent that he was the leading force in pediatric pathology in that country. Petre was born in Sibiu, Romania, on June 9, 1944, just after the Normandy invasion. As he would comment, he was fated to live in an ‘‘ideological wasteland’’ for much of his life. Following World War II, Romania came under Soviet domination for 25 years and then under a cruel, restrictive dictatorship for another quarter of a century. But as his former students would attest, Petre was genetically programmed to make history in spite of this. Petre’s father was a physician, having worked as a Senior Consultant in Internal Medicine at the II Medical Clinic in Cluj-Napoca. His mother graduated from the Bucharest University, having majored in geography and history. Petre’s mother undoubtedly passed on a love of these subjects to Petre, since he was well versed in both. Petre attended the Faculty of General Medicine at the University of Medicine and Pharmacology in Cluj. He graduated with a mark of ‘‘10,’’ first in his year in the nation. Following an internship, he planned to train in internal medicine. But because of the political situation in the country at the time, this option was not available to him. He therefore became a resident in the Department of Pathology at the University of Medicine and Pharmacology in 1969. In 1972, he again placed first in the country, with a perfect 20/20 on the Specialist in Pathology Examination. Between 1972 and 1974 he worked as an assistant in pathology at the University while at the same time embarking on obtaining a PhD. He successfully defended his thesis concerning the relationship of hepatitis B to hepatocellular carcinoma. Dr Florescu then joined the faculty of the University as a lecturer and eventually rose to the rank of Professor in 1993. In 1985, he became the primary pathologist at the Clinical Children’s Hospital in Cluj-Napoca and remained at that post until his retirement in 2009. On December 25, 1989, Ceausescu’s execution ended the repressive dictatorship. Thus, 1990 brought the dawning of a new age for Romania, and Petre fully embraced it. Dr Florescu was a self-taught pediatric pathologist. Resources, including textbooks, were scarce in Romania, and travel outside the country had been severely limited. Therefore, his knowledge was initially based on his observations (he performed over 4000 pediatric autopsies and examined over 150 000 surgical specimens in his career) and those few publications to which he had access. He was an exceptional diagnostician with excellent clinical acumen. With his newfound freedom he immediately sought further training in France, attending sessions in Strasbourg, Paris, and Rouen. He was intent on sharing his knowledge with his fellow Romanians and therefore published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and gave approximately 250 presentations at regional, national, and international venues. In 1997, he published a monograph entitled The Pathologic Basis of Disease in Children. He was also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Romanian Journal of Pathology. Unquestionably, Dr Florescu’s greatest role—as recognized by both former students and colleagues— was that of teacher. He demanded much from his students, but he did so in a fashion that maximized their talents. He endeavored to make as many resources as possible available to his pupils, even at his own personal expense. Clinical colleagues were not exempt from his push for excellence. His clinical-pathologic conferences were some of the most spirited and information-charged that I have witnessed. He is said to have been admired by *Corresponding author, e-mail: Johnbuchino@louisville.edu Pediatric and Developmental Pathology 17, 419–420, 2014