A HISTORICAL VIEW OF OUR OPHTHALMOLOGICAL PAST
Doležalová, Š. Pitrová
We present to our professional public, comprising over a thousand members of the Czech Society of Ophthalmology, a historical view of the past of our field with a reminder of its birth, development and flowering up to the 1990s. We take this opportunity to repeat the words of Kurz from his opening lecture at the Eye Clinic after the Second World War: "We bow with respect and admiration before all the small and great workers who have carried the stones and blocks for the construction of our beautiful and noble scientific field and have built the edifice of which we are proud". By elaborating on this theme, which for us represented many deliciously demanding hours of work, we wanted to remind our younger and younger colleagues of at least some of the names of those who have contributed to the development of our ophthalmology in the past. And once again the words of Kurz: "Reminiscences and historical records unfortunately receive little attention in our country. How easy it is to forget even names that were attractive and dazzling in life. The second generation no longer knows how these workers lived and what they did."
From the history of ophthalmology we know that after the glory days of the Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Arabic eras, there was a period of stagnation in the Middle Ages, when ophthalmology was not a separate discipline but part of surgery. Therapy was conducted by healers, often charlatans, and operations were performed by lay people or even executioners. It was only at the beginning of the modern era that our field was revived.
Thus, independent eye clinics were established at universities only from the beginning of the 19th century (London 1804, Vienna 1812, Budapest 1816, Prague 1820, Leipzig 1853, Berlin 1868, Paris 1879). Talking about the past of Czechoslovak ophthalmology means going back to the times when both our countries, i.e. the Czech Republic and Slovakia, were part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy with Vienna as its capital. However, the centre of education of our countries was Prague with Charles University founded on 7 April 1348.
Among the Czech scientists who made our field famous, the first to be mentioned is Jan Evangelista Purkyně (born 1787, died 28 July 1869). He was a physiologist, but his works, especially the discovery of the principle of ophthalmoscopy, made our science famous in the world. Let us also remember him as the unfortunate father of the gifted painter Karel Purkyně and as a precious person - a patron to whom our Lady Božena Němcová often took refuge in her poverty.
An important scientist of the second half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century was Jiří Procházka, (born 10 April 1749, died 17 July 1820) anatomist, physiologist, pathologist and ophthalmologist. He lectured on anatomy and ophthalmology in Prague and later in Vienna. In 1786 ophthalmology was separated from surgery as a separate discipline. Procházka lectured in Latin and German, as was customary in Central European universities at that time. However, the works written in Latin clearly show the author's origins, they are full of "Bohemianism" and therefore would have been difficult for Cicero or Livy to understand. He originally described glaucoma and numerous other diseases. He was also the first person in Prague to extract cloudy cones from the eye, rather than reclining them (reclination - inserting the cone into the vitreous), as was common until then. His three thousand cataract extractions contributed to the introduction of a new surgical technique. Both Purkyně and Procházka were prominent members of the Royal Czech Society of Sciences, the top scientific institution of their time.
Josef Arnošt Ryba (born 21 March 1795, died 1 March 1856), after Procházka another ophthalmologist of Czech origin, Fischer's assistant, Prague provincial ophthalmologist, professor of ophthalmology. His father Jakub Jan Ryba, the director of the choir in Rožmital pod Třemšín, whose Czech Christmas mass "Hej mistře" we hear every year, is better known to today's generation.
Josef Schöbl (born 16 July 1837, died 6 April 1902), originally studied natural sciences, zoology, comparative anatomy and microscopy at the Faculty of Philosophy. He thought of an academic career in these fields, but turned to medicine due to considerable obstacles. After a transitional period, when he worked as a country doctor after graduation, he returned to Prague, became Hasner's assistant, provincial ophthalmologist and, in the famous year 1883, the first professor of ophthalmology at a Czech university. Professor Hasner, then head of the German clinic, tolerated Schöbl because he considered him German because of his non-Czech-sounding surname. Hasner was a great opponent of the division of the University of Prague into Czech and German and went to Vienna in protest. Let us return to Schöbl. His "Lithographic Sheets of Ophthalmology" were intended to facilitate the study of medicine and are in fact the first textbook of ophthalmology written in Czech. They were published in three editions, the first had 100, the second 300 and the third even 700 subscribers. Schöbl also redrew the pictures for them.
In 1820, the Prague German Eye Clinic was founded, which operated until 1945, when it was closed down. Among the teachers of our first ophthalmologists were two German names, Fischer and Hasner, but the most famous was Elschnig, who after leaving Prague lived and worked in Mariánské Lázně, where he is buried. We should also mention Kubik, who had to leave Prague because of his wife's non-Aryan origin and was then until 1959 the chief physician in Cheb, and the last Rieger, whose at least partial loyalty should have helped doc. Franta to return from the concentration camp.
The year 1883, so important for our country, when after many years of efforts the independence of the Czech University was successfully enforced, marks the beginning of another period in the history of our ophthalmology with the establishment of the Czech Eye Clinic.
Schöbl's pupil and successor was Jan Deyl (born 25 June 1855, died 16 February 1924), a leading figure in our field at the beginning of the century. He was said to be a beautiful and noble figure who won love everywhere. He worked in the secrecy of his bachelor household, cared for the blind, and edited the journal "Deyl's Horizon" for the blind. He published the textbook "External Diseases of the Eye", and educated many excellent ophthalmologists. We read with emotion the news that his funeral procession through Prague was led with a cross by an unknown little boy. He had come, having read in the newspapers of Deyla's death, to say goodbye to the doctor who had saved his sight.
Jindřich Chalupecký (born October 20, 1864, died May 14, 1918) was the third Czech ophthalmologist after Schöbl and Deyl to achieve a professorship and wrote the first Czech textbook on ophthalmology in 1902. His name almost disappeared. If you take the time to read some of his works, you will be enchanted by his beautiful, delicious-sounding Czech language, almost without archaism, the perfect composition and stylisation of the individual chapters and the professional content. At that time, however, we did not only have the Czech Eye Clinic in Prague, but soon after its establishment some other cities opened their inpatient eye departments. We can see from the names of the heads of the eye departments that they were mostly German-speaking doctors until the end of World War I.
After 300 years of unfreedom, they all enthusiastically started to fight against the remnants of the war, especially trachoma in our field, and thus our ophthalmology began to flourish in the newly established Czechoslovak Republic. In 1926, Professor Deyl's long-standing wish to group ophthalmologists into a scientific and professional association, which would take care of the development of ophthalmology in our country and of publishing activities, was realized. The Czechoslovak Ophthalmological Society was founded and a year later the first volume of the Ophthalmological Proceedings was published. Until then, the scientific works of our ophthalmologists were published in the journals of general medicine. Kadlický, Brukner and Kurz were mainly responsible for both.
Záboj Brukner (born September 14, 1895, died December 25, 1929), nephew and pupil of Deyl, headed the Czech Eye Clinic in 1929 after Lešer's death, was co-founder and first executive director of the Czechoslovak Ophthalmological Society, edited the Ophthalmological Proceedings. It remains to sadly recall what he could still have done if his young life had not ended under the wheels of a passing express train in Černošice at Christmas 1929.
The first professor of ophthalmology at the University of Bratislava was Deyla's pupil Roman Kadlický, who in 1930 moved to the Czech Eye Clinic in Prague to lead it, with interruptions during the Second World War, until 1948.
From 1921 we had another Czech eye clinic in Brno. It was established from the eye department headed by Plenck and the first head of the clinic was Deyl's pupil Bohumil Slavík (born 11 October 1888, died 6 May 1953). He stood at the head for 34 years and educated a number of pupils - the future head doctors in Moravia. In the decade 1921-1930 other eye departments were established, so that in 1930 there were already 15 of them (including 2 Czech eye clinics) in 13 towns with a total of 806 beds.
During World War II, the only other department was established in Třebíč (Václav Šmejkal). The two Czech clinics in Prague and Brno were closed and converted into hospital wards, the universities were closed, and the only German eye clinic in Prague remained. At the end of the Second World War, in 1945, we had 22 inpatient wards in 19 cities (Prague 3, Ostrava 2) with 1105 beds.
After the end of World War II, the liberation from Nazism brought a great boom to our entire health care system, including our ophthalmology. Three more eye clinics were established in Hradec Králové, Pilsen and in the premises of the closed German clinic in Prague, the Second Eye Clinic. This period is associated with a number of outstanding personalities who made the field of ophthalmology famous beyond the borders of our homeland. The first and also the youngest head of the clinic in Hradec Králové was Prof. Jan Vanýsek (born 5 August 1910, died 14 September 1995), who was the first in our country to insert an artificial lens into a patient's eye after cataract surgery. In 1969, at his new workplace in Brno, he was elected rector of Masaryk University. After Gal and Pajtáš, he became the third ophthalmologist to receive this honour.
Rudolf Knobloch (born 11 May 1905, died 19 April 1976), a pupil of Kadlický, was a head doctor in Pilsen from 1938, but he was dismissed during the occupation because of his wife's non-Aryan origin and could return only after the occupation ended.
Jaromír Kurz (born 29 June 1895, died 30 October 1965), a pupil of Deyl, in whose person the fortunate fate gave Czechoslovak ophthalmology a leading figure, was later the only one of our ophthalmologists to be elected an academician. He had great merit for our journal, society and the whole of ophthalmology. He published two textbooks "Fundamentals of Ophthalmology" and "Ophthalmoneurological Diagnosis".
In 1946, the opening of the eye clinic in Olomouc followed, whose first head was Václav Vejdovský (born 15 February 1896, died 28 September 1977), who, a pupil of Slavík, "our Margrave of Moravia", was, along with Kurz, the leading personality of our ophthalmology for a long period. In 1946, 5 additional eye departments were established and by 1950, 6 more. In just five post-war years, the number of our eye departments doubled and the bed capacity increased by 100%.
In 1948, the first Czech eye clinic, at that time already the First Eye Clinic, was taken over by Emil Diensbier (born 19 September 1908, died 23 January 1985), another famous ophthalmologist who led it for 27 years.
The development of our field continued in the decade 1951-1960 when 17 more inpatient departments were added, mainly in district towns.
In 1952 the 3rd Prague Eye Clinic was opened from the existing department in Prague Vinohrady. Its head, Josef Janků (born 1886, died 30 June 1963), a pupil of Deyl, published a priority work on ocular toxoplasmosis as early as 1923, which bears his name as "Morbus Janku".
In 1956, the Institute for Further Education of Physicians and Pharmacists was established in Prague at Bulovka under the direction of F. V. Michal (born 10 November 1910, died 22 September 1986), a pupil of Kadlický and Kurz, who then represented our field as chief ophthalmologist at the Ministry of Health for many years.
In 1960, we had 60 eye departments (including seven clinics) with 2448 beds. This seemed to exhaust the need for ophthalmic departments in our country, as only 6 more were established after 1960. During the transformation of the health care system after November 1989, most departments reduced the number of beds, which is in line with the worldwide trend to transfer maximum activity to outpatient practice, mainly for economic reasons.
After the division of Czechoslovakia, the Czech and Slovak Societies of Ophthalmology continue to work separately as separate entities, the journal Czech and Slovak Ophthalmology (and its editorial board) is common for both countries.
SLOVAKIA
In 1465, the first university in Slovakia, Academia Istropolitana, was founded in Bratislava, but after 25 years of existence it ceased to exist. In 1635 the University of Trnava was founded, within which a medical faculty was established in 1769. The Trnava university did not survive, however, and in 1777 it was transferred to Buda and from there later to Pest. Among the teachers of the University of Trnava, we should mention Joseph Jacob Plenck, who wrote and published a textbook on eye diseases, Doctrina de morbis oculorum, for the use of medical students in 1777. This was translated not only into German and English, but also into Portuguese, Italian and even Japanese. In the 18th century, two private schools in Slovakia, in Banská Bystrica and Kežmarok, prepared candidates to study at medical faculties in Prague, Vienna and Pest, as Bratislava did not have its own university until after World War I in 1919. Deylu's pupil Roman Kadlický (born 25 December 1879, died 8 July 1948) was appointed the first professor of ophthalmology there, and in 1930 he was succeeded by Anton Gala (born 12 March 1891, died 29 August 1977), who moved to Prague to head the Czech Eye Clinic until 1948. He headed the clinic for 30 years. In 1948 he was elected rector of the University of Bratislava. It was the first time in the history of our field that an ophthalmologist was elected to this important position.
In 1960, Josef Šuster (born 1 March 1907, died 14 May 1980) succeeded Gal as head of the hospital. The second Slovak eye clinic was opened in 1948 and its first head was Josef Pajtáš (born on 20 February 1900, died on 26 June 1960), who had been the head of the clinic in Martina. In 1959 he was elected rector of the University of Košice as our second ophthalmologist to receive this honour. Unfortunately, we have not been able to complete the historiography of ophthalmology departments in Slovakia due to the fact that after the division of Czechoslovakia into two separate republics in 1993, materials on ophthalmology departments in the Slovak Republic became difficult to obtain. This task awaits one of the colleagues from our sister country.