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The history of Polish parasitology and its relations to Europe was greatly influenced, as was the history of the country itself, by two World Wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945).
Parasitologists up to 1939
Before 1918, during the partition of Poland, three famous parasitologists
Professors Konstanty Janicki, Michal
Marian Siedlecki and Witold Stefanski studied in the leading European
parasitological institutes and after the First
World War returned to Poland to create three centres of general,
protozoological and veterinary parasitology.
Professor Konstanty Janicki (1876-1932) was one of the extensively
educated Polish parasitologists. He
studied for 4 years under Leuckart in Leipzig and then under Weismann in
Freiburg and Zschukke in Basel. He spent
5 years with Grassi in Rome and at two Swiss Universities. In 1917,
working in Lausanne and partly in Neuchâtel,
together with another Pole Dr Felix Rosen, he described the life cycle of
Diphyllobothrium latum, the first parasite
known to have two consecutive hosts. Professor Janicki was the author of
cercomer theory and introduced the
original concepts of parabasal apparatus and karyomastigont; the latter
was of basic significance for understanding
the structure and systematic of Protozoa. On his return to Poland in 1919
Professor Janicki took the Chair of Zoology
at Warsaw University and contributed substantially to the creation of the
“Warsaw School of Parasitologists” focused
on the general biological aspects of parasitology. Among his students and
continuators of his ideas were: Eugeniusz
Grabda, Jadwiga Grabdowa, Mikolaj Janicki, Stanislaw Markowski,
Wlodzimierz Michajlow, Zdzislaw Raabe
and Wincenty Leslaw Wisniewski.
Professor Michal Marian Siedlecki (1873-1940 in Sachsenhausen) studied at
the Institute of Zoology in
Berlin under Schaudinn, in College de France and in Pasteur Institute in
Paris as well as in two Marine Stations at
Naples and Wimereux. In Poland he was professor at the Chair of Zoology
at Universities in Wilno and Krakow.
Professor Siedlecki was known as a founder of modern knowledge of the
Sporozoa; he described the life cycle of
Eimeria schubergi. His activities in nature protection, especially
in
marine environment, were well known. He was a
member of the Board of International Office of Nature Protection. In
Poland he created the Marine Fish Institute
(1928) in Gdynia, where Professor Janina Janiszewska worked.
Professor Witold Stefanski (1891–1973), was a parasitologist of a younger
generation. He studied free
living nematodes under Professor Jung in Geneva University (1913–1917).
In Poland in 1925 he took over the Chair
of Zoology and Parasitology at the Veterinary Faculty of Warsaw
University. His contribtions to the life cycles of
Dioctophyme renale and Hypoderma bovis were considerable.
Together with Gustaw Poluszynski, professor at
Lwów University, he was a founder of the Polish School of Veterinary
Parasitology. The School expanded
considerably after 1945; Professor Stefanski, with his leading position
among researchers in biology, was the
founder of the Department of Parasitology of Polish Academy of Sciences
in 1952, which in 1980 turned into the
Witold Stefanski Institute of Parasitology, directed now by Professor
Andrzej Malczewski. Among the students and
assistants of Stefanski there were: Bogdan Czaplinski, Jan Drozdz,
Andrzej Fagasinski, Barbara Machnicka-
Rowinska, Andrzej Malczewski, Janina Pastuszko, Wieslaw Slusarski, Marian
Swietlikowski, Stefan Tarczynski
and Eugeniusz Zarnowski.
At the time, when the pathogenicity of Giardia lamblia was at least
a controversial issue, in Poland
Professor Jozef Waclaw Grott (18..-1973?), an internal medicine specialist
with a hobby – giardiosis, was active.
He worked in the same hospital in Warszawa, where in the mid-XIX century
Dr Vilem Duszan Lambl, a Czech,
described Giardia intestinalis. It is worth noting that Dr Lambl is
buried in Warsaw. Professor Grott widely used
mepacrine in Poland; it was introduced in 1933 by Professor Galli-Valerio
from Lausanne for treatment of giardiosis.
An effective treatment of giardiosis made possible an objective
evaluation of the pathogenic role of Giardia in
humans and contributed significantly to the clinical knowledge of
giardiosis.
Dr Ludwik Anigstein (1891–1975) worked at the State Institute of Hygiene,
founded and directed until 1933
by Dr Ludwik Rajchman, who later becames Director of the Department of
Hygiene at the League of Nations in
Geneva and after the Second World War one of the creators of UNICEF. In
1926 it was Dr Anigstein, who organised
the Department of Parasitology at the State Institute of Hygiene in
Warszawa. As a first class malariologist he served
as a consultant in several African and Asian countries and was a member
of the Malaria Commission at the League
of Nations in Geneva. In the late 1930s he emigrated to the US and became
a professor at Gallveston University in
Texas. During the Second World War the State Institute of Hygiene in
Warszawa was a “shelter” for several Polish
parasitologists involved in the production of a vaccine against typhus.
Among these were Professors Czeslaw
Gerwel, Jerzy Morzycki and Stefan Tarczynski. Professor Morzycki
(1905–1954) reactivated the Marine and
Tropical Medicine Institute in Gdansk and was a co-founder of the Polish
Parasitological Society and its first
President. After the World War II the staff of the State Institute of
Hygiene, especially Dr Mikolaj Janicki and
Professor Zofia Dymowska, were actively involved in the eradication of
malaria in Poland and in the training of a
cadre of parasitologists for the Epidemiological and Sanitary Stations
throughout the country.
Last but not least one has to mention Rudolf Weigl (1883-1957), professor
of Biology at the Medical
Faculty in Lwow University, director of Weigl’s Institute in Low and
Krakow and finally (1948-1951) professor of
the Department of Biology at the Medical Faculty of Poznan University. As
his youngest assistant I (ZSP) may
confirm that Professor Weigl's academic activity in Poznan contributed
substantially to the formation of the Medical
Parasitology School in this town represented by Professors Zdzislaw
Czapski, Czeslaw Gerwel, Witold Kasprzak,
Zbigniew Pawlowski, and Feliks Piotrowski. Professor Weigl, cytologist
and zoologist with a strong interest in
medical problems, gained his international reputation as the inventor of
the first vaccine against typhus, which saved
hundreds of thousands of people during World War II. Professor Weigl was
an international expert in lice - Pediculus vestimenti, the
intestine
of which was used as an in vivo culture of Rickettsia provazeki.
Parasitologists after 1945
After the World War II one can observe a further development and progress
in general parasitology (Professor
Wincenty Leslaw Wisniewski and his students: Bozena Grabda-Kazubska,
Leokadia Jarecka, Katarzyna
Niewiadomska, Teresa Sulgustowska); parasitic protozoology (Professor
Zdzislaw Raabe and his assistant
Stanislaw Kazubski); environmental parasitology (Professor Wlodzimierz
Michajlow and his students Alicja
Guttowa, Krystyna Kisielewska, Teresa Pojmanska, Krystyna Rybicka) and
veterinary parasitology in Warszawa
(Professor Witold Stefanski); in Lublin (Professors Alfred Trawinski and
Stefan Furmaga) and Wroclaw
(Professor Zbigniew Kozar). It was also the time when medical
parasitology developed in Poznan, Lodz and
Gdansk (Professors Czeslaw Gerwel, Jozef Waclaw Grott, Jerzy Morzycki).
In the harsh postwar circumstances Polish parasitologists keep closely
co-operated with leading European
parasitological institutions and later on exerted a strong influence on
the collaboration between various groups of
European and World parasitologists.
The young Polish parasitologists benefited much from the experience and
kind help of the heads of
parasitological institutions in Europe and in the US. First links were
established with France (Professors Alain G.
Chabaud, Jean M. Doby, and Robert Ph. Dolfus) and the United Kingdom
(Percy C.C. Garnham, Brian Maegraith,
Walace Peters, James Desmond Smith, and Lord Lawson Soulsby). Later on
Polish parasitologists found support
from the USA (Professor Bronislaw Hoenigberg, Myron Schultz, James
Steele), Germany (Professors Karl Enigk,
Werner Mohr, Gerhard Piekarski) and Switzerland (Professors Jean G. Baer
and Johannes Eckert). Friendly and
good working relations were established with Russian parasitologists
(Professors Evgenii Pavlovskii and his
daughter Irina E. Bychovskaya-Pavlovskaya. Konstantin Skryabin, Z.G.
Wasilkova), Czechoslovakian
parasitologists (Professors Jan Hovorka and Otto Jirovec), Hungarian
(Professor Aleksander Kotlan), Ukrainian
(Professor Aleksander Markewitch) and Bulgarian parasitologists
(Professor Konstanty Matoff).
It did not take long for Polish parasitologists to start to influence the
co-operation of various international
communities of parasitologists. The Polish Parasitological Society,
founded in 1948 as one of the first parasitological
societies in Europe, an active Parasitological Committee and the
Institute of Parasitology of the Polish Academy of
Sciences created opportunities for a wide international collaboration. In
the years 1954-1970, the congresses of
Polish Parasitological Society were sometimes the only link between the
parasitologists from the East with those
from the West across the “Iron Curtain”. Professors Stefanski and Kozar
were among the initiators of the most
important international parasitological organisations: the International
Commission on Trichinellosis (1958), the
International Commission on Toxoplasmosis (1958), the World Federation of
Parasitologists (1960) and the
European Federation of Parasitologists (1966). Professors Zbigniew Kozar
and Zbigniew Pawlowski were
presidents of the International Commission on Trichinellosis (ICT), in
the years 1964-1972 and 1976-1980,
respectively. The secretariat of ICT was in Poland until the year 2000.
Professor Zbigniew Kozar was among the
founders of the World Federation of Parasitology (1960-1972) and its
vice-president; Professor Bogdan Czaplinski
was the president of WFP in the years 1978-1982. The first president of
the European Federation of Parasitologists
was Professor Witold Stefanski (1966-1971), and the vice-presidents were
Professors Zbigniew Kozar (1971-1972)
and Zbigniew Pawlowski (1973-1980). Since 1984, Polish parasitologists
have been represented on the Board of
the European Federation: Professors Katarzyna Niewiadomska (1984-1992)
and Teresa Pojmanska (1996-2000).
Polish parasitologists were the organisers of several international
parasitological congresses and conferences
such as:
Acknowledgements. Authors are indebted to Professors Stanislaw
Kazubski and Katarzyna Niewiadomska for their valuable additions and
comments to the manuscript. The original presentation, including several
photographs, is available on CD-ROM through the Polish Parasitological
Society and at the Acta Parasitologica Internet page
http://www.ipar.pan.pl/acta.