Theodor Bilharz
Theodor Bilharz | |
---|---|
bilharzia and Schistosoma haematobium | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Medicine; Parasitology |
Institutions | University of Freiburg Qasr El Eyni Hospital |
Author abbrev. (zoology) | Bilharz |
Theodor Maximilian Bilharz (23 March 1825 – 9 May 1862) was a German
Bilharz was born and educated in
While he was professor of anatomy at the Qasr El Eyni Medical School (now part of the
Early life and education
Theodor Bilharz was born in
In the winter semester of 1843, Bilharz entered the
Bilharz passed the state exam in 1849 to obtain a license as medical doctor.[6] There are sources which state that he graduated in 1848,[8] and he was awarded the medical degree without having to appear the examination because of his excellent performance throughout the course.[3] These information may not be reliable as better biographical sources say he passed the exam in 1849.[4][9] As he graduated, he immediately got an appointment as an assistant to Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold at the University of Freiburg. Von Siebold became his major influence in parasitology and later discoveries. Bilharz initially planned to work in South America hoping to achieve good research in parasitology as he described: "The path to become a professor maybe shorter via America than via Tübingen." The next year, a recently appointed professor of anatomy at Freiburg, Georg Ludwig Kobelt recruited him as his prosector.[3]
Career and achievements
In 1850, Wilhelm Griesinger, then at the
Griesinger and Bilharz left on 25 May and reached
In 1852, Griesinger left Egypt and Bilharz became professor of medicine in his place. The next year, Bilharz was appointed as chief surgeon of internal diseases. When Abbas I died in 1854, his successor
Helminthology
Bilharz in his first year in Egypt found and reported different human parasites including Ancylostoma duodenale, Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, pinworm (Oxyuris), pork tapeworm (Taenia solium), dog tapeworm (Echinococcus granulosus), hookworms (Ancylostoma and Necator) and guinea-worm (Dracunculus medinensis). His first major discovery was that of the tapeworm Hymenolepis nana that he recovered from the small intestine of an Egyptian boy in Cairo in 1851.[13] Von Siebold gave the original name as Taenia nana in 1852.[14] In 1851, Bilharz also discovered a novel intestinal flatworm from an infected child in Cairo. Von Siebold named it Distoma heterophyes in 1852.[15] English biologist Thomas Spencer Cobbold created a better generic name Heterophyes in 1866; thus, the parasite became Heterophyes heterophyes. Bilharz's specimen became the first known helminth in the family Heterophyidae.[16]
Discovery of bilharzia and Schistosoma haematobium
In 1851, during an autopsy, Bilharz discovered an obvious worm from the
You can imagine my surprise when I saw a trematode [fluke] protruding from the frontal opening of the groove and moving back and forth; it was similar in shape as the first, only much finer and more delicate... [The female] was completely enclosed in the groove-shaped half canal of the male posterior, similar to a sword in a scabbard.[23]
Bilharz was able to find the male fluke rolled itself up to form a canal in which the female resided, and he named the canal as gynaecophoric canal.[29]
By March 1852, Bilharz also found many eggs from the bladders of the fluke-infected individuals, indicating that those were of the parasites. He could not establish what the eggs did to cause the disease and suspected them as the cause of kidney stone (
[The miracidium] had a long, cylindrical cone-shaped form which was thicker anteriorly and more rounded posteriorly, with a proboscis-like protuberance anteriorly. It was covered completely with rather long cilia.[34]
Although he could not make observation on the further development of the miracidia, his discovery revealed half of the life cycle of the parasite.[17] By then, he established that the disease (its pathology) was caused by the eggs and not the worms themselves.[35] He reported his observations in the journal Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift in 1856.[36][10]
However, the generic name was not a good choice. A closely related name Distoma had been introduced by French zoologist
The disease had been known as bilharzia (or bilharziasis), after the discoverer, the term that is broadly used for all types of infections with different Schistosoma species.[44][45] In 1949, the World Health Organization adopted the name bilharzia for medical terminology. When ICZN validated the name Schistosoma haematobium in 1954, it specifically recommended that the disease be called bilharziasis.[43] Following the valid scientific name, schistosomiasis became widely used,[45] and the name urinary schistosomiasis is also commonly used to differentiate it from other schistosome infections.[46][47]`
Towards the end of the 19th century, Cobbold noted as "without question, [S. haematobium is] the most dangerous [of human] parasite[s]."
Discovery of Schistosoma mansoni
When Bilharz found parasite eggs from infected individuals in March 1852, he noted unique characteristic of schistosome eggs, as each egg has a spine, which he called "pointed appendage."[34] He observed the spiny eggs in the bladder as well as in the intestine. He wrote to von Siebold that some of the eggs were different in having terminal spines while some had lateral spines.[52] Bilharz also noted that the adult flukes were different in anatomy and number eggs they produced.[53] His drawings depicted which were later identified as those of S. mansoni adults.[6]
Until 1902, it was generally believed that S. haematobium produced both lateral and terminal-spine eggs. But a British physician Patrick Manson showed that the lateral-spine eggs were produced only by schistosomes in the intestine. The intestinal flukes were established to be a new species, which Louis Westenra Sambon named Schistosomum mansoni in 1907 in honour of Manson.[54][55]
Electric organs of fish
After the discovery of bilharzia, Bilharz researched on the
Later life and death
Bilharz returned to Germany in 1858 to visit his hometown and former universities, and giving lectures at Vienna.[3] He made a brief trip to upper Egypt in the winter of 1859 around the Red Sea, where he noticed a good research opportunity.[4] He spent seven months there with his brother, Richard Alexander Alfons, who had just completed his medical degree at the University of Vienna.[60] In 1861, he was transferred to the department of infectious disease (syphilis and skin infections). Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, requested him to work as personal physician to the Duchess[6] on an expedition around the Red Sea.[61] With research in mind, Bilharz accompanied the Duchess in early 1862. While staying at Massawa he contracted typhoid fever or typhus (reports are contradictory) and became seriously ill.[3] When he returned to Egypt, he was in terminal condition and died on 6 May 1862, at the age of 37.[61]
British parasitologist and biographer, Harry Arnold Baylis wrote of Bilharz's death: "No one, probably, had ever been more universally or more sincerely mourned in the European colony in Cairo."[4] Richard Alexander Alfons also lamented that "The plan [for his career], to further medical research by natural scientific methods, had failed."[62]
Bilharz's works and grave remained largely forgotten until the first International Congress of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene held in Cairo in 1928.
Legacy
- Bilharzia or bilharziasis is another term for
- The Theodor Bilharz Research Institute was established by the United Arab Republic in 1962 at Giza.[69]
- The crater Bilharz on the Moon was named after him.[70]
References
- PMID 13976588.
- PMID 10996119.
- ^ S2CID 187867556.
- ^ S2CID 84398225.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4704-2812-9.
- ^ a b c d e Tan, SY; Ahana, A. "Theodor Bioharz (1825-1862): discoverer of schistosomiasis" (PDF). Medicine in Stamps. Singapore Med J. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
- OCLC 22119786.
- ^ PMID 9416802.
- S2CID 75454939.
- ^ OCLC 969446445.
- S2CID 219182033.
- ^ OCLC 969446445.
- PMID 24205412.
- PMID 15906649.
- PMID 32095640.
- S2CID 33481705.
- ^ PMID 30016215.
- PMID 25685449.
- ^ Renault, AJ (1808). "Notice sur l'hématurie qu'éprouvent les Européens dans la haute Egypte et la Nubie" [Note on hematuria experienced by Europeans in Upper Egypt and Nubia]. Journal Général de Médecine, de Chirurgie et de Pharmacie (in French). 17: 366–370.
- .
- ^ Khanna, Kanika (2021-10-28). "How a Schistosoma Parasite Prevented a War". The American Society for Microbiology. Retrieved 2022-01-24.
- S2CID 72837929.
- ^ S2CID 86495376.
- OCLC 23656677.
- PMID 24698483.
- ISBN 0-521-30312-5.
- ^ ISBN 9780521530606.
- S2CID 44006098.
- S2CID 222194050.
- PMID 6750740.]
- ^ Bilharz, Theodor (1853). "Fernere Mittheilungen über Distomum haematobium" [Further communications on Distomum haematobium]. Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Zoologie (in German). 4: 454–456.
- PMID 9566238.
- ^ PMID 30699922.
- ^ ISBN 9780521530606.
- S2CID 220203816.
- ^ Bilharz, Theodor (1856). "Distomum haematobium und sein Verhältniss zu gewissen pathologischen Veränderungen der menschlichen Harnorgane" [Distomum haematobium and its relation to certain pathological changes of the human urinary organs]. Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift (in German). 6: 49–65.
- ^ International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (1997). "Opinion 1865 Eudistoma Caullery, 1909 (Tunicata): given precedence over Paessleria Michaelsen, 1907". Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature. Vol. 54. pp. 70–71.
- ISSN 0374-5481.
- ISSN 0374-5481.
- ^ a b Weinland, David Friedrich (1858). Human Cestoides: An Essay on the Tapeworms of Man. Cambridge (UK): Metcalf and Company. p. 87.
- OCLC 1029825577.
- ^ Hemming, Francis (1954). Opinions and Declarations Rendered by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (Volume 4 Part 16). Vol. 4. London: International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature. pp. 177–200.
- ^ ISBN 9780521530606.
- PMID 15145376.
- ^ S2CID 231984728.
- S2CID 34185792.
- PMID 25685452.
- PMID 20750313.
- S2CID 86502860.
- S2CID 195078476.
- PMID 27956028.
- ^ Lofty, W.M. (2009). "Human schistosomiasis in Egypt: Historical review, assessment of the current picture and prediction of the future trends". Journal of the Medical Research Institute. 30 (1): 1–7.
- ISBN 978-1-84826-733-6.
- ^ Sambon, L.W. (1907). "Remarks on Schistosomum mansoni". Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 10: 303–304.
- PMID 4156405.
- ISBN 978-0-19-536672-3.
- PMID 20277440.
- PMID 29645878.
- ISSN 1477-9137.
- ISBN 9781470428129.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8014-0992-9.
- ISBN 9781470428129.
- ^ Records of the Faculty of Medicine of the Egyptian University: Congress Volume Containing Papers Read by Members of the Staff at the Celebration of the Centenary of the School of Medicine and the Congress of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Held in Cairo, December 1928. Cairo: Government Press. 1932. p. 320.
- ^ El-Halawani, A. A. (1963). "Theodor Bilharz: The history of bilharziasis research with particular reference to Egypt". Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Bilharziasis. Vol. 1. Cairo: Ministry of Science Research. pp. 69–71.
- PMID 34178230.
- S2CID 232217953.
- ^ "Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia)". www.who.int. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
- ^ "CDC - Schistosomiasis". www.cdc.gov. 2021-01-13. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
- PMC 1958585.
- ^ Bilharz Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN)
Further reading
- Schadewaldt, Hans (1970–1980). "Bilharz, Theodor". ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.
- "Bilharz, Theodor". Encyclopedic Reference of Parasitology: 71. 2001. ISBN 978-3-540-66829-9.
- Ebstein, Erich (1920). "Theodor Bilharz". Ärzte — Briefe aus Vier Jahrhunderten (in German). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 162–164. ISBN 978-3-642-89637-8.