Szemészet, 2004 (141. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

2004-06-01 / 2. szám

Szemészet 256 tőle. 1925-ben a Német Szemorvostársaság neki ítélte az Albrecht von Graefe-díjat. 1927-ben az „International Council of Ophthalmology” tagja lett, 1930-ban pedig tanárát, Axenfeldet követte a „Klinische Monatsblatter für Augenheilkunde” főszerkesztői székében. Adolf Hitler hatalomátvétele után élete szenvedések és megaláztatások sorozatává vált. 1935-ben elmozdították igazgatói székéből, és elvesztette minden megbízatását a német szemorvoslásban. 1939-ben a Szily család sanyarú körülmények közé menekült vissza Budapestre. A második világháború után a Budapesti Egyetem Szemklinikájá­nak élére nevezték ki. Az ott töltött első munkanapja után két héttel hunyt el. Münsteri újbóli kinevezése az ottani klinika igazgatójává már túl későn érkezett. The life and scientific projection of András von Rötth Juan Murube Madrid, Spain András Rötth was born in 1893. He graduated from secondary school in Kolozsvár (Transylvania) and studied medicine at the University of Kolozsvár, a prestigious institution founded in 1872. He graduated with a MD degree in 1919, as he had spent several years in the military service, serving at the front and rear in the First World War. Rötth began to work as a doctor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Kolozsvár under the direction of its Chairman, Professor József Imre Sr. (1851-1933). When the University of Kolozsvár moved to Szeged in 1921, the young Rötth followed Professor Imre Sr. as his Assistant (tudor) and continued to work with him for three years. Imre Sr. retired in 1924, the same year that the Department of Ophthalmology of the University of Pécs Medical School was founded. The Director there was the famous Professor József Imre Jr. (1884-1945), son of Imre Sr. Rötth moved to Pécs to work with him as a favorite assistant and then later as his first assistant at the State Eye Hospital. Imre Jr. moved to Budapest in 1929 and joined the Department of Ophthalmology of the State Hospital. Rötth moved with him and continued to work with him for ten more years, until he left for the U.S. In this time, Rötth carried out a lot of work in research, clinical attention and surgery. He was very interested in trachoma, possibly due to the fact that Imre Sr. had been an active fighter against trachoma. In 1937 Rötth was nominated as the referent of the Trachoma Symposium in the Concilium Ophthalmologicum Universale, in Cairo. By 1939, after having worked for 14 years under Imre Jr.’s leadership, Rötth had already written 52 reports. One of these publications was the book titled, “Ophthalmology for the Practising Physician.” In 1939, due to the Nazi political situation, von Rötth and his Jewish wife felt threatened and decided to leave Hungary and emigrate to the U.S. There von Rötth worked for a few months in the Medical School of Northwestern University, Chicago. In the fall of 1939, he moved and settled near the American Pacific coast, in Spokane (Washington, U.S.), where he worked for approximately 30 years. In Spokane he practiced ophthalmology and became a very renowned clinician and surgeon. He never left his work in research, orientating it to the clinical aspects. The publications of his studies made him well-known among American ophthalmologists and among the dacryologists of the world. He retired in Spokane in 1968, at the age of 75 and died in 1981, at the age of 88. Dr Rötth’s personality was very sociable and amiable. He liked parties and enjoyed a wide circle of friends. His main hobby was playing tennis. He transmitted his enthusiasm for investigation to one of his children, who also studied medicine and became an ophthalmologist, working in a scientific laboratory in New York and publishing many papers. Dr. Rötth’s scientific heritage was decanted in 99 papers, which he wrote throughout his life in Hungarian, German and English. His contributions to the advance of Medicine were many in laboratory research, clinics and ophthalmic surgery. His work on trachoma was world-renown. He was first to publish the corneal complications of verruca vulgaris. Neverthe­less, his most important contributions were in dacryology: he studied the refractive index of tear, being between 1.3360 and 1.3373 (1922); he was the first to publish the reconstruction of the lacrimal basin with foetal membrane - amnion and chorion - in cases of Symblepharon, albeit with not very good results (1940), but initiating the research in this field that has led to today’s spectacular results; he measured the age-related tear hyposecretion (1941); he standardized the material of the paper strips for the Schirmer test using Whatman 41 filter paper (1941), which is still the standard used all over the world; he was interested in the topic of the artificial tears, at a time when they were not yet commercialised (1945); he introduced for the first time the term “dry eye” (1950), that he used for the very mild lacrimal hyposecretion, without keratits or conjunctivitis sicca, but which today universalised and spread its meaning to any type of tear deficiency; he was the promoter of the concept that qualitative changes in lacrimal secretion are even more important in producing kerato­conjunctivitis sicca than quantitative changes (1953). The scientific world has not paid Dr. Rötth the recognition he deserves and with this brief summary we hope to repay a bit of the debt we ophthalmologists, particularly those deuterospezialized in Dacryology, have with him. 2004. június 4. - A Magyar szemészek hatása külföldön

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