Georg AXHAUSEN
1877–1960
Georg Axhausen graduated from the Military Medical Academy of Berlin, remained in the German army for some years and started his aca- demic work in Kiel in 1904–1906. After several more years with the army, he returned to Berlin as instructor in the surgical division of the Zahn-ärztlichen Institute. He was one of the pioneers in studies of bone graft and necrosis.
Necrotic bone was frequent in prechemotherapy days so that studies in noninfections, that is aseptic bone necrosis, were innovative. He was the first to use the word aseptic necrosis, or at least the first to appear in the mainstream of medical publications. Phemister’s work on the same subject followed and recognized Axhausen’s contribution, and Phemister’s famous phrase “creeping replacement” is well described in Axhausen’s work. In the 1950s the term avas- cular necrosis came to replace aseptic necrosis.
The original paper covered 20 pages but con- tained much detailed criticism of contemporary work and theories irrelevant to today’s readership and have been left out of this edited reprint.
José Luis BADO
1903–1977
Thinker, philosopher, doctor, surgeon, orthope- dist, Bado placed a really brilliant mind at the service of his ideals. Nature generously endowed him with the divine gift of a powerful intelli- gence, which was strengthened and enriched by information acquired through study and medita- tion, through the capacity to think clearly, and through an incomparable gift of synthesis; the colossal knowledge he acquired was generously spread to others through his exciting, easy, elegant, brilliant, and persuasive oratory.
Bado was an inexhaustible source of encour- agement to his pupils to study and meditate; these pupils are to be found not only in his native country, but all over Latin America. In transmit- ting his knowledge, he did not just teach the prin- ciples and goals of a medical discipline; he taught how to understand, how to analyse, and how to synthesize; he taught how to think, how to medi- tate, how to reflect. His pupils heard him say very often: “Observation is not enough; one must think; observation without thought is as danger- ous as thought without observation.”
He practiced the principles that he preached with complete devotion. He took note of the clin- ical facts pertaining to our field, meditated on his notes, interpreted them. He studied methods and techniques, trying to improve them and to use them under the strict control of basic concepts. He put forward original concepts, gathering around them groups of diseases, ostensibly unconnected with each other.
17
