Dumitru Bagdasar (17 December 1893 – 16 July 1946) was a Romanian neurosurgeon, university professor and political activist. He was the founder of the Romanian school of neurosurgery and is known as the father of Romanian neurosurgery.
Biography
Early life
Bagdasar was born in to a large peasant family of Armenian origin. Adamant to receive education, he walked over 2 kilometres to reach his school every day. After finishing primary education he entered Faculty of Medicine of Bucharest in 1913. In 1916 he joined the Military Medical institute in order to help himself financially.[1] In the same year Romania entered the First World War and Bagdasar was mobilized to the front as a military doctor. He was demobilized in 1918 and continued his medical studies until 1922 when he obtained the title of Doctor of Medicine with the thesis "Contributions to the study of postencephalitic parkinsonian syndrome".[2] After graduation, he became a secondary physician at the Military Hospital from 1922 to 1926. He became interested in neurology at the clinic of the Dr. Gheorghe Marinescu.[1]
Provisional career
In 1927 he resigned from the army and married Dr. Florica Ciumetti. With very modest resources, they went together to specialize in America, in Boston. Dumitru Bagdasar specialized in Neurosurgery at the famous Peter Bent Brigham clinic of Dr. Harvey Cushing.[3]
Returning to the Romania in 1929, Doctors Dumitru and Florica Bagdasar encountered difficulties from the state authorities and were assigned to the outskirts of the country. Bagdasar performed his first neurosurgical interventions, in improvised, precarious conditions. in 1935, Bagdasar managed to establish a small neurosurgery service, with ten beds and a single operating room, in the Central Hospital for Nervous and Mental Diseases in Bucharest.[2] This became the nucleus of the future Neurosurgery Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine, from which the Romanian school of neurosurgery would develop. Patients from Hungary, Bulgaria, Palestine were admitted to his clinic. Between 1931 and 1941 he performed 1800 operations on the nervous system.[3] In 1939 he participated in the National Congress of Surgery in Bucharest.[4]
Political activity
Dedicated to social issues his adolescence, he was acutely aware of the impoverished condition of the Moldovan peasant such malnutrition, astronomical infant mortality, illiteracy, lack of hygiene and medical care, which led to him collaborating with left-wing groups. Bagdasar collaborated with the Romanian Red Aid, helping anti-fascists in illegality, defending them in trials. During the Second World War, he was an active part of the leadership of the "Union of Patriots" in 1942, then of the "National Popular Party". In April 1944 he was one of the initiators of the intellectuals' manifesto addressed to Marshal Antonescu, which demanded Romania's exit from the war. He was also one of the initiators of ARLUS (Romanian Association for Strengthening Ties with the Soviet Union).[4]
Later life
On March 6, 1945, he was appointed minister of health in the first government of Petru Groza. In this capacity, he created 60 new rural constituencies, sanatoriums, 100 maternity homes in the countryside, he led campaigns against typhus, typhoid fever, and recurrent fever.[4]
Bagdasar died on July 16, 1946 due to a brain metastases. He was succeeded by his wife Florica Bagdasar as minister of health. In 1951 was posthumously elected a member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences.[5]
