Edward Flatau (27 December 1868 – 7 June 1932) was a Polish neurologist and psychiatrist. He was a co-founder of the modern Polish neurology, an authority on the physiology and pathology of meningitis, co-founder of medical journals Neurologia Polska (translation: Polish Neurology) and Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie (translation: Warsaw Medicinal Journal), and member of the Polish Academy of Learning.
His name in medicine is linked to Redlich-Flatau syndrome, Flatau-Sterling torsion dystonia (type 1), Flatau-Schilder disease, and Flatau's law. His publications greatly influenced the developing field of neurology. He published a human brain atlas (1894), wrote a fundamental book on migraine (1912), established the localization principle of long fibers in the spinal cord (1893), and with Sterling published an early paper (1911) on progressive torsion spasm in children and suggested that the disease has a genetic component.
Life He was born in 1868 in Płock, the son of Anna and Ludwik Flatau of an assimilated Jewish family. In 1886, he graduated from high school (gymnasium) in Płock (now Marshal Stanisław Małachowski High School, Płock, also known as "Małachowianka"). From 1886, Flatau attended medical school at the University of Moscow, where he graduated eximia cum laude. In Moscow, he was greatly influenced by the psychiatrist Sergei Sergeievich Korsakoff (1854–1900) and the neurologist Alexis Jakovlevich Kozhevnikof (1836–1902). Flatau became a medical doctor in 1892. He spent the years 1893–1899 in Berlin in the laboratories of Emanuel Mendel (1839–1907) and at the University of Berlin under Wilhelm von Waldeyer-Hartz (1836–1921). During that time, he worked together with Alfred Goldscheider (1858–1935), Ernst Viktor von Leyden (1832–1910), Hermann Oppenheim, Louis Jacobsohn, Ernst Remak, and Hugo Liepmann. Though he was offered a position of professorship of neurology in Buenos Aires, he returned to Poland and in 1899 settled in Warsaw. He was married twice. He had two daughters, Anna and Joanna Flatau. His first wife Zofia and daughter Anna are described in a book by Antoni Marianowicz. Some stories about his personal life are printed in reminiscences of Wacław Solski and Ludwik Krzywicki.
Scientific accomplishments Flatau dealt with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the brain, treatment of muscle diseases, child neurology, peripheral nerve surgery, anatomy of the nervous system, histopathology of the nerve tissue, experimental oncology, neurophysiology, and nervous system pathophysiology. His scientific career is described in number of works. The most comprehensive are biographies written in Polish by his pupil and subsequent professor of neurology in the postwar Poland, Eugeniusz Herman. Other Polish publications includeKonopka S., Edward Flatau, [w:] Polski Słownik Biograficzny, Kraków 1948–1953, Tom VII/1, Zeszyt 31, s. 28–29, Polska Akademia Umiejętności.Śródka A., Biogramy uczonych polskich, Część VI, Zeszyt 1, A-Ł: Nauki medyczne, Warszawa 1990, s. 155-160, Polska Akademia Nauk, Ośrodek Informacji Naukowej, .Śródka A, Uczeni polscy XIX-XX stulecia, tom I A-G, Agencja Wydawnicza ARIES, Warszawa 1994, .Teofan M. Domżał: Edward Flatau . Neurologia i Neurochirurgia Polska, 2008, 42, 4, 366–371. Besides these contributions there are several written in English and German. A good source of information is the Jubilee Book of Edward Flatau (written in German, French and Polish), published during his lifetime, which contains contributions from his scientific collaborators as well as a bibliography and biography written by his student Maurycy Bornsztajn.Księga Pamiątkowa Edwarda Flatau, Warszawa 1929, s. V-XXIIL, Gebethner i Wolff. In 1937 Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie published special edition devoted to Flatau contributed mostly by his pupils.Mackiewicz, J., Badania Edwarda Flatau nad nowotworami układu nerwowego, „Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie", 1937, nr 21-22, s. 411–413.
Brain atlas and spinal cord In 1894, at the age of 26, he published the influential Atlas of the Human Brain and the Course of the Nerve-Fibres, which was published in German, English, French, and Russian and, in 1896, in Polish. The Polish edition was dedicated "To the memory of a noble man and an eminent physician, Professor Tytus Chałubiński author dedicates this work." The atlas was based on long-exposure photographs of fresh brain sections (up to 10 minutes for flat and 30 minutes for uneven surfaces, by means of small diaphragms). These studies were done in Berlin under Professor Emanuel Mendel. In a review, Sigmund Freud wrote: "The plates with their clarity deserve to be called excellent educational material, suitable as an utterly reliable reference. A schematic plate in the beginning gives an overview of our knowledge on the fibre pathways in the CNS, incorporating the accounts of Mendel, Bechterew and Edinger and continuing with the differing views on the structure of nervous tissue of Camillio Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. The price of the work is minimal if one considers its completeness and beauty. The author and publisher deserve thanks from the medical community for this valuable work." Freud S (1894) Kritische Besprechungen und literarische Anzeigen: Atlas des menschlichen Gehirns und des Faserverlaufes von Ed. Flatau. Int Klin Rundsch 8:1131–1132 In 1899, he published the second edition, which was extended and composed of two parts: an atlas and supplement. The preface to the second edition and supplement was written by Edward Flatau in Warsaw. In the second edition, Flatau added the description of his discovery on Das Gesetz der excentrischen Lagerung der langen Bahnen im Ruckenmark. Flatau's brain atlas was published two years before the work Das Menschenhirn of Gustaf Retzius, but the first publication of images of the brain was the work of Jules Bernard Luys in 1873. Sigmund Freud and Edward Flatau were together editors of the magazine Annual report on progress in neurology and psychiatry in 1897. Both were at the time neurologists.
Flatau's Law His law played an important role in the initial studies of the spinal cord. With the Berlin neurobiologist Johannes Gad, Flatau performed experiments on dogs and criticized the Bastian-Bruns law concerning the loss of function following spinal cord injury (1893). On the basis of numerous clinical spinal cord surgeries, experiments, and subsequent observations, he discovered that the "greater the length of the fibres in the spinal cord, the closer they are situated to the periphery" (Flatau's law). He provided evidence for the laminar arrangement of spinal pathways.
He also described the fifth, seventh, and eighth cranial nerves, and carefully outlined their nuclei. The paper on this topic, Das Gesetz der excentrischen Lagerung der langen Bahnen im Rückenmark, was published in 1897. For this work he received a PhD in medical sciences in Moscow in 1899 (dissertation ). Flatau, E. Zakon ekstsentricheskago raspolozheniia dlinnykh putei v spinnom mozgu. Dissertation for the degree of doctor of medicine. Moscow, 1898, 117 pages + plates. A copy of this work with the dedication "For the highly esteemed Professor Aleksei Yakovlevich Kozhevnikov from the author" is in the collection Savine Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is available https://archive.org/details/zakonekstsentric00flat. This work was presented in 1949, next to a portrait of the author, on display at the IV International Congress of Neurologists in Paris.
The neuron theory Flatau began working at the Center for Anatomy of the Charité in Humboldt University of Berlin two years after the Wilhelm Waldeyer introduced the term neuron (Heinrich Waldeyer himself advocated and popularized the work of Ramón y Cajal). Thus, in 1895, Flatau became interested in neuron theory recently developed by Ramón y Cajal and Heinrich Waldeyer, and became one of its proponents. In several publications, he attempted to establish a unity between the physiology and anatomy of the neuron. Together with Alfred Goldscheider, he worked on the structure of nerve cells and their changes under mechanical, thermal, and toxic influences. They published results of their experiments in 1897 and 1898 in Fortschritte der Medizin and Polish Gazeta Lekarska, which were subsequently published as a special monograph. They state that the character of changes in neuron cells could provide information about the type of influences acting on them. This work, in which the normal and pathologic anatomy of the V, VII, and VIII (cochlear) cranial nerves was included, created much discussion and was adversely criticized by Franz Nissl, who opposed the neuron theory.Haymaker, Webb, 1902–. The founders of neurology; one hundred and forty-six biographical sketches by eighty-eight authors., Compiled and edited by Webb Haymaker [and] Francis Schiller. 2d ed. Springfield, Ill., Thomas xxi, 616 p. ports. 24 cm.
He modified Golgi's method of tissue stainingBernhard Pollack. Methods of staining of the nervous system translated from the second German edition by William R. Jack. Glasgow: F. Bauermeister; London: Whittaker & Co.., 1899. and on the basis of studies of physiological effects of transverse intersection of the spinal cord in dogs carried out together with Johannes Gad, he provided criticism of the Bastian–Bruns sign of disappearance Patellar reflex as a result of this treatment (1896).
Together with his friend Louis Jacobsohn-Lask, he continued anatomy work. In 1895 and 1896, Flatau and Jacobsohn received 1500 marks from Duchess Louise von Bose, probably to develop a presentation for an international medical congress in Moscow in 1897. Along with Jacobsohn, Flatau wrote a well-known textbook of comparative anatomy of the nervous system of mammals (1899).
In 1906, he visited the Munich psychiatric clinic of Emil Kraepelin.
In 1910 and 1911, he wrote three chapters on tumors of the brain and spinal cord for the two volumes of the handbook edited by the Berlin neurologist Max Lewandowsky.
Together with the Warsaw surgeon Bronislaw Sawicki, he published a work on surgery of the spinal-cord cysts and treatment of tumors of the spine, in which he pointed out histopathological issues important for the surgical procedure. This publication was the culmination of several years of cooperation between the two doctors.
Flatau was the first in Poland to describe the cases of encephalitis lethargica and on occasion the name "Economo-Flatau disease" was used to identify this disease in Polish medical literature.Kanigowski Z., Przypadek choroby Economo-Flatau’a, Pam Wil Tow Lek 14, 2, s. 217 (1938).
Neurology and early human genetics In 1911, Flatau and Wladyslaw Sterling published an article on progressive torsion spasm in children.Postępujący torsyjny kurcz u dzieci / E. Flatau, W. Sterling; z oddziału dla chorych nerwowych d-ra E. Flatau w Szpitalu [Żydowskim] na Czystem. 1911. The authors pointed out that the disease was associated with genetic factors. In the same year, Theodor Ziehen and Hermann Oppenheim published a paper claiming that dystonia is related to a disease of the muscles. However, Flatau and Sterling noted that the intellectual capacity of these patients was higher than average. In 1976, Eldridge suggested that the publication of Flatau and Sterling was one of the first to describe the genetic factors of neurological diseases.
In 1927, Flatau, independently of Emil Redlich in Vienna, described the first cases of encephalomyelitis epidemica disseminata (Flatau-Redlich disease). Flatau was convinced that this illness is caused by a virus, which was later confirmed by Mergulis. In 1925, Flatau described in detail Schilder diseaseE. Flatau: Encephaloleucopathia scleroticans progressiva. Neurologia Polska, L’Encephale (Journal de neurologie et de psychiatre), 7, 1925, 475–499. and suggested new name "encephaloleukopathia scleroticans progressive".