Professor Ciril Rozman gives the complete collection of 'Medicina interna' by Farreras-Rozman to CRAI

Ciril Rozman in Clinic Campus CRAI Library, where his donation is exhibited.
Ciril Rozman in Clinic Campus CRAI Library, where his donation is exhibited.
Academic
(27/06/2017)

In 1929 the Spanish version of Grundriss der inneren Medizin, the compendium of medicine by Alexander von Domarus. This translation was the beginning of the book Medicina interna, by Pere Farreras Valentí and Ciril Rozman (Elsevier), which became a model compendium for medicine education in Spain and Latin America. Now, Ciril Rozman, who was professor of Medical Pathology and Clinics at the University of Barcelona, has given the complete collection of this work to CRAI.

Ciril Rozman in Clinic Campus CRAI Library, where his donation is exhibited.
Ciril Rozman in Clinic Campus CRAI Library, where his donation is exhibited.
Academic
27/06/2017

In 1929 the Spanish version of Grundriss der inneren Medizin, the compendium of medicine by Alexander von Domarus. This translation was the beginning of the book Medicina interna, by Pere Farreras Valentí and Ciril Rozman (Elsevier), which became a model compendium for medicine education in Spain and Latin America. Now, Ciril Rozman, who was professor of Medical Pathology and Clinics at the University of Barcelona, has given the complete collection of this work to CRAI.

The donation, exhibited in the Clinic Campus CRAI Library, has three editions of the German treaty by Von Domarus, eighteen editions of Medicina interna in Spanish and one in Catalan, as well as six editions of Compendium in Spanish, apart from a Catalan edition and another in Portuguese.

Among the exhibited works is the first Spanish translation, from 1929, of Grundriss der inneren Medizin, by the doctor and vet Pere Farreras Sampera, father of Pere Farreras Valentí. His son, Farreras Valentí, re-edited this work years later and extended it to the current two volumes.

Ciril Rozman started working on this book in 1954 and supervised its following editions between 1968 and 2016, year of the last publication of the book. From now on, the new director if Francesc Cardellach, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, who took part in the edition of the book during the last fifteen years. This is one of the few model treaties that survive in paper and it is the key for its extension according to Rozman, since “books with more than two volumes die”.

This book has the participation of around 500 collaborator experts in different subjects. “Collaborators have freedom, and as editors, we try to avoid incoherencies with other parts of the book and we try that the researchers respect the language” but “the Compendium has my opinions printed, I do not always respect the collaboratorʼs”, says Rozman.

Among the several editions, the one from 1959 has an inscription by Farreras Valentí dedicated to Rozman, who apart from being his disciple, was his doctor, friend and successor awarded the Professorship of Medical Pathology in Salamanca (1967) as well as directing the School of Haematology of the University of Barcelona (1969).

 

How has medicine evolved?

According to Rozman medicine has not evolved in a symmetric way. For him, one of the most complex disciplines is psychology, “we will be in the preface of the prehistory of psychology until we discover the physical base of abstract thinking” says Rozman, who takes for granted we will need more than a century to discover it.

For him, “the great last discovery in brain anatomy was what Ramon y Cajal did in 1889, when he showed that the structure of the brain was not reticular -like Golgi said- but there were individual neurons connected between them. It went from reticular to neuronal structure”. Regarding the other subjects, Rozman highlights the advances in endocrinology and haematology thanks to the fact that “constants can be controlled permanently”. Other disciplines, such as cardiology, have made great advances. “I have a patient who underwent a change of pre-aortic fold without opening the chest but by putting the catheter through the femoral artery. Although this is not a change in the essence of the human being, it is an incredible progress in medicine”.

As an internist, Rozman affirms that “I am convinced the internist has to come back with power”. He is still working as a doctor, apart from being in contact to the research as promoter in the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute. The expert also states that “a professor of medicine has to do three things: teaching, research, and assist”. “I have done distance teaching, through this book” concludes Rozman.

Virtual exhibition on the work by Ciril Rozman