Constantin von Economo

Constantin von Economo was a Austrian Neurologue of Rumanian origin, born the August 21st 1876 with Brăila, Romania; deceased in 1931. Its complete name is Constantin Alexander Economo Freiherr (Baron) von San Serff.

Biography

Constantin von Economo was born in the Rumanian city Brăila, parents resulting from the easy Greek aristocracy. Shortly after its birth its family settles with Trieste, then Austrian city, where it is high. It is by reading the work published in 1864 “Genius and madness” of Cesare Lombroso that it felt attracted by medicine, but after its secondary studies with the Gymnasium of Trieste in 1893, his/her father obliges it to begin studies of engineer and it is only after 2 years that it is authorized to be registered in medicine. During its studies he is successively demontrator at the institute of Histology of Anton von Rosenstein (1842-1925), then attending the Institute of Physiology of Siegmund Exner (1846-1926).

After having obtained its doctorate with Vienna in 1901, it will spend one year of training specialized to the university private clinic of Nothnagel, then with Paris where there will remain one year, in psychiatry at Valentine Magnan and in neurology at Pierre Marie. It goes then to Strasbourg at Albrecht Bethe, the father of the future Nobel Prize of Physics 1967 Hans Bethe, and to Munich at Emil Kraepelin.

In 1906 it returns to Vienna and becomes there the assistant of Julius Wagner von Jauregg (1857-1940) in psychiatric private clinic. It is also during this pilot period of airship and in 1908 among the first Austrian aviators. Being holder of a pilot's license it serves during the First World War on the face of the south Tyrolean and receives several decorations. In 1916 it is reminded Vienna in order to take share with the care of traumatized cranial in the Private clinic of Wagner von Jauregg. It is at this time that it began its studies on the epidemic encéphalite.

It is named professor associated with psychiatry and neurology in 1913, and 1921 extraordinary full professor. In 1920 it marries the girl of an Austrian general, prince Alois von Schönburg-Hartenstein, but in 1928 it declines the offer to take the succession of Wagner von Jauregg as director of the Private clinic of Psychiatry and Neurology of Vienna wishing to continue its research tasks without having to deal with administrative tasks.

In 1931 he becomes director of the research institute on the brain lately created in relation to the private clinic of psychiatry, but he dies suddenly of an heart attack a few months only after the foundation of the institute.

One must in Constantin von Economo has 27 publications, of which a book on the lethargic encéphalite published in 1929, one year after the work of Cruchet.

Eponymy

It left its name to the lethargic encéphalite, described simultaneously by French Jean-Rene Cruchet (disease of von Economo or von Economo-Cruchet). This disease of the central nervous system which was spread on an epidemic mode in 1919 and 1920 characterizes by an important somnolence, (lethargy), from where its name of European disease of the sleep, pains muscular (mylagies), a fever, a stuporeux state, a ophtalmoplégie and a weakness (paresis) of the members.

References

Wagner-Jauregg J. Dr. Constantin Baron Economo von San Serf †. Wiener klinische Wochenschrift, 1931,44 (44).

Von Economo C. Die Encephalitis lethargica, ihre Nachkrankheiten und ihre Behandlung. Berlin and Vienna, Urban und Schwarzenberg, 1929

External bond

a biography of von Economo on the anglophone site “Who named it”

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