| This paper presents the life and achievements of Professor Jan Mikulicz-Radecki and his
contribution to European and world surgery. He was born in 1850. Four periods can be distinguished in
his surgical career: (1) Vienna period, 1875-82, when he worked by the side of the great Theodor
Billroth: he introduced a number of new diagnostic and operative techniques, aseptic and antiseptic
procedures, published research papers. He made the first endoscope for examining the esophagus and
stomach. (2) Cracow period, 1882-87, when he was head of the Department of Surgery: he inaugurated
his work with a lecture in Polish, which started: Gentlemen, I have been accused that I do not know the
Polish language - which is my mother tongue to me as well as to any of you. He published papers
on the use of iodophorm for healing wounds, was the first surgeon who sutured a perforated gastric
ulcer (1885) and invented pyloroplasty (1887), nowadays called Heinecke-Mikulicz pyloroplasty. (3)
Königsberg period, 1887-90: he improved the technique of gastric resection, worked on surgery for
peptic ulcer and advocated aseptic and antiseptic procedures. (4) Wroclaw (Breslau) period, 1890-
1905: Mikulicz was appointed head of a newly founded Surgical Department. He rebuilt it and designed
one of the largest and most modern operating theaters in Europe that time. He introduced silk gloves
for operations for the first time in the world. In 1892 he described bilateral swelling of salivary and
lacrimal glands, called Mikulicz's syndrome; in 1902 he published his experience with two-stage colon
resection; and in 1904 he described ostitis fibrosa cystica juvenilis. Called "a king in the kingdom of
surgeons", he was one of the fathers of the world's modern surgery; having a brilliant surgical mind, he
was a pioneer of many new operations and an inventor of surgical tools, permanently assimilated in the
world's surgery. |
