Gheorghe Marinescu

Gheorghe Marinescu (February 28, 1863, Bucharest – May 15, 1938, Bucharest) was a Romanian neurologist, founder of the Romanian School of Neurology.

After the attendance of Medicine at the Bucharest University, Marinescu received most of his medical education as preparator at the laboratory of histology at the Brâncoveanu Hospital and as assistant at the Bacteriological Institute under Victor Babeş, and with Babes already early published several works on myelitis transversa, hysterical muteness, dilatation of the pupil in pneumonia etc.

After qualification, on the recommendation of Babes the government sent him with a grant to Paris to undertake postgraduate training in neurology under Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital, where he met Pierre Marie, Joseph Babinski and Fulgence Raymond. He later worked with Carl Weigert in Frankfurt a.M. and then with Emil du Bois-Reymond in Berlin. On the assignment of Pierre Marie he lectured on the pathological anatomy of acromegaly at the Berlin International Congress in 1890.

After nine years abroad Marinescu returned in 1897 to Bucharest where he received his doctorate. At Bucharest a new professorial department had been created for him at the Pantelimon Hospital. Shortly thereafter, in 1897, a chair of Clinical Neurology was created in the University of Bucharest, at the Colentina Hospital. He remained in this post for the next 41 years and is regarded as the founder of the Romanian School of Neurology.

Between July 1898 and 1901 the Marinescu made the first science films in the world, in his clinic in Bucharest:[1] The walking troubles of organic hemiplegy (1898), The walking troubles of organic paraplegies (1899), A case of hysteric hemiplegy healed through hypnosis (1899), The walking troubles of progressive locomotion ataxy (1900) and Illnesses of the muscles (1901). All these short subjects have been preserved. The professor called his works "studies with the help of the cinematograph", and published the results, along with several consecutive frames, in issues of "La Semaine Médicale" magazine from Paris, between 1899 and 1902.[2] In 1924, Auguste Lumiere recognized the priority of professor Marinescu concerning the first science films: "I've seen your scientific reports about the usage of cinematograph in studies of nervous illnesses, when I was still receiving "La Semaine Médicale", but back then I had other concerns, which left me no spare time to begin biological studies. I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me. Unfortunately, not many scientists have followed your way."[3]

Marinescu maintained close academic links with his Parisian colleagues and many of his articles, which exceeded 250 in number, were published in the French language. He had a wide range of research interests, including pathological anatomy and experimental neuropathology. Daily contact with scores of the infirm and his astuteness made him put use every one of the latest methods as they became available: the roentgen ray, with which he investigated bone changes in acromegaly, the film camera, for the study of body movements in health and disease. The results of these studies appeared in the monography Le Tonus des Muscles striés (1937) with Nicolae Ionescu-Siseşti, Oskar Sager and Arthur Kreindler, with a preface by Sir Charles Sherrington.

Early in his career he published with the bacteriologist Victor Babeş and the French pathologist Paul Oscar Blocq a much needed atlas on the pathological histology of the nervous system. His description with Blocq of a case of parkinsonian tremor due to tumour in the substantia nigra, in 1893, was the basis for Édouard Brissaud's theory that parkinsonism occurs as a consequence of damage to the substantia nigra. With Paul Blocq he was the first to describe senile plaques and with Romanian neurologist Ion Minea confirmed in 1913 Hideyo Noguchi's discovery of Treponema pallidum in the brain in patients with general paresis. His monumental work La Cellule Nerveuse, with a preface by Santiago Ramon y Cajal, appeared in 1909.

Gheorghe Marinescu was an eminent teacher. In his lectures he emphasised ideas and gave perspective for further investigations. Recognition in the form of honours came to him from many countries. It was he above all others who was chosen to represent the students of Charcot when the centenary of the great master was celebrated in 1925.