Julius Szymanowski

Julius Alphonse Nikolai Szymanowski, Julij Karlovich Szymanowski (; in Riga – in Kiev) was a Russian surgeon of Polish-German origin, professor at the University of Helsinki and University of Kiev, originator of many plastic surgery techniques, including the Kuhnt-Szymanowski method. Author of the surgical textbook Handbuch der Operativen Chirurgie. A collection of his poems Was ich gelebt: Lieder was published posthumously (under the pseudonym Julius Steinborn).

Early life

He was born in Riga as the son of a civil servant Carl Szymanowski and his wife Helene, maiden name Kutzky. Szymanowski's ancestor was Polish and was sent to Courland on a diplomatic mission. In later generations, marriages were made to German women and the family converted to Protestantism. Julius did not know the Polish language. From the age of 11 he attended gymnasium in Reval and graduated with honors (he received a scholarship of 90 rubles). When he was about 12 years old, his father lost his fortune and the boy decided that from then on he would fend for himself. As a junior high school student, he manifested many talents and interests, took up painting and poetry, and founded a volunteer fire department with his schoolmates. However, he had no talent for languages and did poorly even in Russian.

From 1850 he studied medicine at University of Dorpat; his teacher of surgery was Georg Adelmann, and under his influence he decided to specialize in this field. During the Crimean War, when Adelmann was sent by order of the Tsar to Reval, Szymanowski, along with three other talented students, helped bandage French and English prisoners of war. During his student years, he engaged in such activities as gymnastics, took long-distance hikes and wrote poetry. He also became known as a talented inventor and devised, among other things, a new model of surgical saw, which he described in his doctoral dissertation.

From 1861, he was an associate professor at University of Kiev. In 1863, as a military surgeon, he served in the Russian troops suppressing the January Uprising.

He was awarded, among others, the (1864), the Order of St. Stanislaus, Third Class (1859), the Order of St. Anna, Third Class (1862) and Second Class (1866).

On 27 August 1860, in Helsinki, he married Adelaide von Rambach, daughter of an artillery colonel. Their son Vsevolod (1866–1934) was a distinguished beekeeper.

In 1866 he fell ill with testicular cancer. In the fall of 1866 he wrote to his teacher Adelmann asking for a consultation, but the latter, having set out for Kiev, fell ill on the way and had to turn back to Dorpat. That's when Szymanowski requested surgery from Pirogov, who performed a tumor resection. Two weeks later, Szymanowski underwent another operation performed by . In early 1868, hemoptysis betrayed the presence of lung metastases. The tumor also gave metastasis to the arm bones and to the stomach. In March, in a letter to his colleague Uhde, he wrote that he already "was one foot in the grave." He died suddenly, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon on 25 April that year, allegedly from a stroke caused by an embolism. and Fumagalli.

Academic achievements

Szymanowski's main interest was plastic surgery. His textbook Handbuch der Operativen Chirurgie is considered one of the most important published works in this field in the 19th century. His own engravings were later used by other plastic surgeons (including Kolle and Davis) to illustrate their own books.

The eyelid lift correction operation introduced by Szymanowski, modified by Hermann Kuhnt, was called the Kuhnt-Szymanowski method.

He devoted a separate monograph to rhinoplasty and its history, published in Dorpat in 1857. In it, he made an almost complete review of the 225 nasal reconstructions described in the medical literature and the techniques used by his predecessors - Branka, Bojani, Tagliacozzi, Lucas, Rust, von Graefe, Carpue, Reiner, Bünger, Dieffenbach, Pirogov, Mütter, Pancoast and Adelmann. In 1857, he also published his first article on plastic surgery in Prague's Vierteljahrschrift für die praktische Heilkunde; in it, he proposed minor modifications to rhinoplasty and cheiloplasty procedures. He described a case of congenital cleft soft palate co-occurring with a defect in the anterior pharyngeal wall.

Another area of Szymanowski's interest was , to which he devoted a small atlas published in 1857 in Dorpat and a year later in Reval. In this book he presented and illustrated most of the various dressing techniques used at the time.

In the summer of 1859, he translated and improved Pirogov's textbook on the surgical anatomy of the arteries and fascia. During this time he also published a series of articles on various amputation techniques.

In 1862, he presented the invention of an instrument he called the "somatometer" for anthropometric measurements.

His work also included case reports and observations from many other surgical departments: inguinal hernias, genital abnormalities in infertile married couples, and the technique and complications of tracheotomy.

Works

Краткое руководство к практическим упражнениям в десмологии для врачей и студентов. Киев: Унив. тип., 1862 Гипсовая повязка. 1, 2, 3. История неподвижных повязок. [Соч.] Ю. Шимановского. Пер. с нем. Н. Гейнац. Последнее упрощение неподвижной повязки и употребление гипсовой повязки на различных частях тела / Сост по указаниям Ю. Шимановского лекарем Шатковским. Гипсовая повязка на поле сражения и проект улучшения средств для транспорта раненых / Сост. под руководством Ю. Шимановского лекарем Кишко-Жгерским. Санкт-Петербург: тип. Я. Трея, 1863

Оперативная хирургия. Киев: тип. Ун-та св. Владимира, 1864 Операции на поверхности человеческого тела: С атласом, содержащим на 108 табл. 602 рис. Киев: тип. И. и А. Давиденко, 1865

Военно-хирургические письма. Киев: Е.Я. Федоров, 1868