Introducing Karel Rokitanski
This week, we take a brief look at the life and works of one Czech man who has had very little recognition in the world, despite his significant contributions to the field of medicine. Karel Rokitanski was born two hundred years ago on February 19, 1804, in the North Bohemian town of Hradec Kralove. At just fifteen, he moved to Prague to study medicine, but re-located to Vienna during his studies, to soon become one of the most recognised pathologists in the world.
"It is unbelievable but during his life he dissected over 60,000 people. He correlated his findings to the clinical picture and discussed them with other famous professors, such as professor of internal medicine Josef Skoda, and they started to treat people according to these findings. So, they saved the lives of an enormous number of people, who would have died if they had not been operated."
So, thanks to Rokitanski and his autopsies, people didn't have to die from all sorts of diseases anymore...
"Yes. Because he found out why people died and tried to persuade surgeons to operate and not treat belly aches with ointments, for example. He forced them to operate and also supported Ignac Semmelweis, who was famous for [curing] infectious diseases and [avoiding] deaths of mothers after labour. Rokitanski also studied heart diseases and was involved in so many descriptions of new diseases that over fifteen eponyms still exist in modern medicine. This means that diseases or symptoms are named after him. So, in the field of medicine, he is known all over the world but people rarely know that he was Czech."
Why is he important to Czech scientists, pathologists, medical experts today?
"I must say that he is important for the entire scientific community but he was also very active academically. He was the first elected rector at the University of Vienna as a doctor of medicine. He was the dean of the faculty four times and was also the president of the Academy of Science in Vienna. He founded the Anthropology Society. Besides all this, he also made very important political speeches that were influenced by Bernard Bolzano and Immanuel Kant and acted as a politician in the House of Lords, where he was a speaker for a while. He also acted as an advisor to the Education Ministry and some of the reforms he did all over Austria are still working today, two hundred years later. So, he was really an exceptional personality and for us, now that we've entered the European Union, with his motto 'Freedom and Progress' sets an example that we should follow."
...and to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karel Rokitanski, an exhibition devoted to his life and works opens at Prague's Faust House on Karlovo Nam (Charles Square) on Wednesday. Find out more in this week's Arts.
