Gheorghe Marinescu (1863-1938)

Romanian neurologist; founder of the Romanian School of Neurology; member of the Romanian Academy and of many other foreign academies and societies. Gh. Marinescu, a student of Victor Babes, was among the first in the world to apply methods from histology and histopathology to neurology, and to apply the anatomo-clinical method to scientific research. He made original contributions to physiology, histology and the nervous system practical learning (the theory of reflex trophicity, the palmomentony reflex, kinetoplasma, chromatolysis, neuronophagy). To investigate the nerve cell, Marinescu's methods considered the latest findings in physics and chemistry of his time. Ultramicroscopic researches allowed him to transpose analysis data from the colloidal theory to the neuron structure. He dared make experiments such as transplants and cultures of nervous tissue. The use of backward degenerations method guided him in learning about the locations of nerve formations such as the nucleus of pneumogastric nerve, facial nerve etc.

The main corpus of his writings was dedicated to the pathological anatomy of the nervous system: regeneration phenomena occurring in the spinal marrow with those suffering from tabes, injuries of the motor neurons in the amiotrophic side sclerosis. He investigated the neuro-infections of the nervous system, paying high attention to the ways of propagation of the poliomyelitic and herpetic viruses in the nervous system, and the experimental zosterian infection, etc. The histo-chemical studies he conducted entitles Professor Gheorghe Marinescu to be considered a trail blazer in the researches done in normal and pathological histology of the nervous system. He was also preoccupied to localize oxidative ferments in the cell corpus, in dendrites; one of his major concerns was the theory of reflexive trophicity, which was of large reputation. T he last ten years of his life were dedicated to studying the physiology and physio-pathology of the nervous system. For this he made use, among the first, of the encephalographic method and the conditioned reflexes method in diagnosing hysteria, epilepsy, aphasia and neurosis. During the last years of his life he started write a monograph on the biology of the nerve cell, never to be finished.

World medicine owes him to a great extent the advances made in the field of modern neurology. His main works include: "Studies on the Evolution and Involution of the Nerve Cell" (1900), "The Nerve Cell" (1909), "The Lethargyc Encephalitis" (1909), "Conditioned Reflexes" co-authored with A. Kreindler (1936).

Last update: 2004, October 27
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