Burrill Bernard Crohn (1884-1983): o homem por trás da doença

Abstract

ABCDDV/967B urrill Bernard Crohn was born in June 13 th , 1884, in the city of New York. From a family of jewish emigrants from Europe, Theodore and Leah Crohn had 12 children, educated as Jewish orthodoxy, still spread over the generations 5 .In New York, he attended City College (Class of 1902) where his interest for the medical career was born. According to his own biography, he decided to follow the medical pathway because his father used to have terrible digestion problems; so, he chose to help him by studying medicine. He received his medical degree at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons (1907), at the age of 23 3 .At this University, Crohn developed many experimental researches concerning intra-abdominal hemorrhage, for what he gained an M.A. and a PhD in addition to his M.D degree. However, he felt obliged to decline the first two degrees, because of their price at that time (US$35), and he did not wish to ask his father for the extra money 8 . After this period, he was admitted as one of the 120 candidates for eight positions as an intern at Mount Sinai Hospital. Crohn had spent two and a half years at this position, a mixed rotation for surgery and medical diseases, and an extra year of pathology, mentored by brilliant Dr. Emanuel Libman (1872-1946. He believed that this rotation at the pathology department gave him the proper balance of combined scientific laboratory and clinical medicine 8 .Most of his medical activities were developed in Mount Sinai Hospital. He joined this hospital as an intern in pathology, then as assistant in pathology and then physiological chemistry from 1911 to 1923. Finally, Crohn joined the clinical staff in 1926. As a local general practitioner, he referred most of his patients to Mount Sinai, today known as a prestigious teaching and postgraduate hospital3.One curiosity of those old days was that Crohn was married to Lucile Pels in 1912, having two children, Ruth (born in 1912) and Edward (born in 1917). However, without having any time for the family -mainly because of daily house calls almost every evening and his dedication to "Affections of the Stomach", published in 1928 -, they had to dissolve their marriage by divorce 8 .His special interest in bowel diseases is demonstrated in his biography: "It has been my misfortune (or perhaps my fortune) to spend most of my professional life as a student of constipation and diarrhea. Sometimes I could wish to have chosen ear, nose and throat as a specialty rather than the tail end of the human anatomy…" 3 .Gastroenterologists existed much earlier than gastroenterology was recognized, and defined as one of the internal medicine's specialties. That was what happened with Crohn, as most of the digestive diseases wards were in held of surgeons at that time. He was only recognized as a full member of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) in 1917, mentored and helped by William J. Mayo, who was introduced to Crohn by Dr. Libman 8 . After that, he spent some years until 1921 studying the functions...

Medical eponyms from linguistic and historical points of view

“…Moreover, the role of Burrill B. Crohn in the discovery and specific description of the disease is questioned. According to Smith and Wakefield [ 13 ] the policy of the journal was to list authors alphabetically rather than by the importance of their contribution. There was also a dispute between the authors on their contribution to the final paper [ 15 ].…”

“…The disease of gastrointestinal tract Crohn disease was named after Burrill Bernard Crohn [13]. He and Leon Ginzburg and Gordon Oppenheimer published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1932 a description of 14 cases of so-called regional colitis.…”