Napoleon Baniewicz

Napoleon Baniewicz (4 January 1904 – 1979) was a Polish–Lithuanian neurologist and psychiatrist. He was the first to describe a neurological symptom now known in neurology as the Baniewicz symptom. He was the founder of the neurological department of the Bydgoszcz Hospital and became a local celebrity.

Early life and education Napoleon Baniewicz was born to a Polonized and, as a result of the January Uprising, impoverished Lithuanian szlachta family, of the Jastrzębiec clan, as the eldest of four children of the eponymous Napoleon Baniewicz and his wife Maria Baniewicz (born Maria Citowiczówna) in Kowno, Kowno Governorate, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was the administrator of the noble estate of the aristocratic Tyszkiewicz family. Napoleon grew up in a Catholic and patriotic household at a time when there was no independent Polish state.

He attended Russian elementary school and graduated from the Polish Adam Mickiewicz Gymnasium in Kowno. In his early adult years, he worked to gather enough savings to enroll in the University of Vienna. With the help of a scholarship, he studied medicine. Among his professors were Otto Pözl, Emil Redlich, Erwin Stransky and Otto Marburg. From 1929 he worked as a volunteer in the neurological department and for the physician Josef Schaffner. During his time in Vienna he often met with fellow Poles and in such meetings he met his future wife, Walentyna Lachowiczówna that came from a wealthier szlachta family from Courland. During his time as medical assistant, he researched inflammations of the nervous system. In 1935 he became the head of the neurological department of the PKP Hospital in Wilno.

He was also at the Medical Academy in Warsaw, where he was appointed associate professor of medicine. However, he increasingly feuded with the communist leadership, which wanted him to resign, while his colleagues would have preferred to see him head his own independent neurological clinic in Bydgoszcz. Baniewicz eventually moved to another hospital in Bydgoszcz and withdrew from the public eye.

Personal life He was part of the Samogitia Corporation at the University of Vienna, which was made up of Lithuanian-Polish students.

As the founder of several neurological departments, he contributed to the common good of the cities of Bydgoszcz, Inowrocław and others.

Thesis and Works Die Achsenreflexe (Mittelflächenreflexe). In: European Neurology. 149, 2004, S. 49–59, doi:10.1159/000128802. A new sternal reflex in cases of severe cerebral damage. In: British medical journal. Band 2, Nummer 5268, Dezember 1961, S. 1675–1678, doi:10.1136/bmj.2.5268.1675, PMID 13864669, PMC 1970838 (free full text).