Prof. dr. Alexandru Moruzi s life cues and opening lesson at the Faculty of medicine of iași

Abstract

Professor Dr. Alexandru Moruzi lived in the first half of the XX century. Born in an aristocratic family, he studied in Paris where he graduated from both high school and the Faculty of Medicine. It was also in Paris that Moruzi worked as a young doctor and specialised in general surgery and neurosurgery, a domain that just then was being born as an independent field. He was trained in Dr. Maurice Robineau`s service and in Professor Thierry de Martel`s surgery clinic, two outstanding French medical personalities of the time. In October 1929, Dr. Moruzi returned to Bucharest, where he completed his military service and enrolled as a reserve medical officer lieutenant. In 1930 he was a secondary surgeon in the Third Surgical Clinic of the Coltea Hospital in Bucharest, directed by the great surgeon, Prof. Dr. Amza Jianu, a pioneering Romanian neurosurgeon. One year later, in 1931, Moruzi started his brilliant career in Iasi, when he was appointed senior [primar] doctor in the Surgery Service of the “Caritatea” [Charity] Hospital. A complex medical personality, he systematically opened new fields of surgical activity and teaching, in keeping with the latest advances of Western European medicine. Due to his qualities and expertise, Prof. Dr. Leon Ballif, director of the “Socola” Hospital of Nervous and Mental Diseases in Iasi, decided to set up a separate pavilion for neurosurgical interventions in 1933, and Moruzi was appointed coordinator of this first Neurosurgery Service ever established in Romania. Little by little, similarly to his masters, De Martel and Robineau, Moruzi enabled neurosurgery to gain the status of an autonomous branch of surgery in his country, too. An assistant professor since 1935, he was promoted full professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Iasi, in 1938. He became professor of External Pathology and Surgery and Orthopedic, as well as professor of Surgery Clinic and Diseases of the Urinary Tract. During World War II he assisted the wounded with great devotion. This article outlines several aspects of Professor Moruzi`s professional life and points out the main ideas of his inaugural lecture, given in November 1938. Not only outstanding medical personalities and their work were sketched, but concepts, trends, tendencies and debates were pointed out, reflecting the complex surgery metamorphoses of those days. Alexandru Moruzi lived in a revolutionary era of surgery and he took part in the important modernisation of medical teaching and practice in Iasi. Until now, his lecture illustrates a substantial and personally experienced lesson of history of medicine.