Edward Flatau (27 December 1868, Płock – 7 June 1932, Warsaw) 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 and Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie, 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 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 in 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 include 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. In 1937 Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie published special edition devoted to Flatau contributed mostly by his pupils.
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, Russian, and in 1896 in Polish. The Polish edition was dedicated "To the memory of a noble man and an eminent physician Profesor 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."