Albert Wojciech Adamkiewicz

Albert Wojciech Adamkiewicz (August 11, 1850 - October 31, 1921) was a Polish pathologist who was born in Żerków. In 1873 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Breslau, where he was a student-assistant to physiologist Rudolf Peter Heinrich Heidenhain (1834-1897). From 1879 until 1892 he was chief of General and Experimental Pathology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.

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Adamkiewicz is remembered for his pathological examinations of the central nervous system. His research of the variable vascularity of the spinal cord was an important factor concerning modern clinical vascular surgery. He is credited with describing the major anterior segmental medullary artery, which is now known as the artery of Adamkiewicz.

In the early 1890s Adamkiewicz published a series of articles claiming the discovery of a cancer-causing parasite he called Coccidium sarcolytus, as well as an anti-cancer serum. Further testing proved the serum a failure, and Adamkiewicz was severely criticized by the medical community at Jagiellonian University. Soon after he relocated to Vienna where he practiced medicine at Rothschild's Jewish Hospital.

References

• Annals of Thoracic Surgery
• Who Named It? Albert Adamkiewicz