Witold Orlowski—Prominent Polish Internist

Abstract

The Polish internist Witold Eugene Orlowski was a leader in the medical community of Poland for many years and was the founder of the Polish School of Internal Medicine. From 1907 to 1957, he was a professor at various universities in both Poland and Russia and devoted his entire life to improving the practice of internal medicine. Orlowski was born in Norwipole in the province of Minsk in Byelorussia (White Russia) on January 24, 1874. His father was the manager of an estate. In 1882, when Witold was 8 years old, the family moved to Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, where Witold graduated from high school. He then enrolled in the St Petersburg Military Academy (St Petersburg, Russia), from which he graduated in 1889. From 1889 to 1901, Orlowski worked at the University Hospital in St Petersburg. In 1907, he became head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the prestigious Russian University in Kazan. In 1920, he left Russia and returned to Poland to become head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the university in Krakow (southern Poland). When the new University of Warsaw opened in 1925, Orlowski organized and developed the Second Department of Internal Medicine. During World War II (1939-1945), the Nazis removed Orlowski from his post; however, he clandestinely taught medicine to Polish students. After the war, he helped rebuild the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Warsaw. In 1948, Orlowski retired from the university, but he continued as head of the Municipal Hospital (the former St Lazarus Hospital) in Warsaw until 1957. Orlowski was the first physician in Russia to use pneumothorax for the management of tuberculosis. He founded several laboratories and outpatient clinics that specialized in internal medicine. In addition to his teaching and clinical work, Orlowski published more than 150 articles and coauthored about 650 articles on numerous topics, including metabolic diseases, cardiology, tuberculosis, and acid-base balance. His greatest achievement was an 8-volume handbook of internal medicine, of which he was the sole author. This monumental work included the pathophysiological, pathological, and clinical aspects of internal medicine and was the basic handbook for generations of Polish physicians. Orlowski was elected president of the Polish Society of Internal Medicine and served as editor-in-chief of the Polish Archives of Internal Medicine. He was mentor to many physicians, and 26 of his protégés became professors of medicine. Orlowski died in Warsaw on December 2, 1966, at the age of 92 years. In 2006, Poland honored him on a stamp (Scott No. 3831) issued on the centenary of the founding of the Polish Society of Internal Medicine. The stamp depicts Orlowski's portrait on a background of the royal castle and the monument of King Sigismund III (1566-1632), along with an electrocardiographic wave to emphasize Orlowski's interest in cardiology.