Professor Thoma Ionescu (1860–1926) founder of the Modern Romanian School of surgery

The year 2010 will be proclaimed the “Thoma Ionescu Year” for the Romanian medicine. This occasion marks a unique double anniversary: 150 years since the birth of the great scientist and 100 years since his surgical demonstrations during an Anglo-American tour in New York, Philadelphia, Rochester and Chicago. Brother of politician Take Ionescu, Thoma signed up for the University of Medicine in Paris, in 1879, after graduating “Sfântul Sava” High School, while, at the same time, attending the courses of the Faculty of Law, which he graduated in 1882. After this, he passed the exams for non-resident and resident medical studentship, thus completing his clinical and surgical training. Simultaneously with his activity in the hospital as an extern and an intern, he gained the titles of associate anatomy prosector in 1887, and afterwards full anatomy prosector at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, after passing certain examinations where he got the first prize. In 1885, after another examination, he was appointed provisional intern of the hospitals and worked at Bicetre, in Bourneville’s Epilepsy Department. In 1886, he was appointed full intern of the hospitals and he spent all four years in surgery, being an intern for Peyrot (Bicetre), Paul Berger (Tenon), Le Dentu (St. Louis) and professor Verneuil (Pitié-Salpetrière). In 1890, he competed for the medal offered to the interns of the 4th year, for the Surgery Department, and he obtained the second place, thus receiving the silver medal in Surgery. In the same year, his memorial, presented at the competition for the medal, and entitled Internal Retroperitoneal Hernias, obtained the “Laborie” prize of the Academy of Medicine in Paris, a prize worth 5 000 francs, awarded to “the work which determined the faster progress in Surgery in the current year”. Together with being granted with this prize, the physician Thoma Ionescu became laureate of the Academy of Medicine in Paris. In 1892, he presented his PhD thesis, entitled L’évolution intrauterine du colon pelvien / Intrauterine Evolution of the Pelvic Colon, and, after an exam where he won the first prize again, Thoma Ionescu obtained the title of associate professor in Paris (1892-1894). In the same year, the Ministry of Public Education in Paris commissioned Thoma Ionescu, who was at that time prosector in Paris, to study and report the anatomy teaching methods used at the universities of Germany and Austria. In 1894, he wrote a chapter entitled Anatomie du tube digestif / Anatomy of the Digestive Tract, in the important anatomy treaty elaborated by Poirier and Charpy, where he described for the first time in the medical literature, the duodeno-jejunal fossae, the sigmoid fossae, the rectal sheath and the rectal wings. In 1895, due to a special law, the Department of Topographical Anatomy and surgical clinic was founded in the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, and, Thoma Ionescu was asked to become the chairman. In 1897, he participated in the International Medical Congress in Moscow, where he presented the resection of the cervical sympathetic in exophthalmic goiter and epilepsy. At the 1898 Marseilles Congress of Gynaecology, obstetrics and paediatrics, Professor Thoma Ionescu gave a lecture on the complete abdominal castration in case of uterus-annex septic lesions. Anatomist by formation, then surgeon, he understood from the beginning that the fundamental bases of the surgical education also rely on the knowledge of the surgical anatomy besides the experimental surgery. That is why the Institute of Anatomy was divided by Ionescu into a Department of Topographical Anatomy and one of Experimental Surgery. The knowledge of topographical and operational anatomy allowed both the teacher and his school to imagine or improve a number of surgical techniques and methods, some of which are also valid today (for instance the technique of Thoma Ionescu type large hysterectomy, the technique of cervical sympathectomy, etc.). His other contributions, considered classic, regard the anatomical study of the pharynx, peritoneum, abdomen, duodenum, pelvic colon, etc. (Anatomie topographique du duodenum et hernies duodénales / Topographical Anatomy of the Duodenum and Duodenal