LUCJA FREY – FAMOUS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE LVIV NEUROLOGICAL SCHOOL

Abstract

Łucja Frey-Gottesman (November 3, 1889, Lviv – 1942?) is a Polish physician of the Jewish origin from Lviv, one of the first women-neurologists in the world. She is an alumna of the medical faculty of Warsaw University (1923) and was the first one to describe the neurological syndrome that was named in her honor – Frey syndrome. In 1929, she returned to Lviv for personal reasons: she married the lawyer Mark (Mordekhai) Gottesman. Since May 1929, she had been a doctor at the Jewish Hospital at 8 Rappoporta Street. This is a very rare neurological disorder associated with trauma of areas adjacent to the parotid gland or damage to the (usually operative) injury of auriculo-temporal nerve. Doctor Frey published an article about the syndrome of auriculo-temporal nerve, which is now known as a Frey Syndrome, in Polska Gazeta Lekarska newspaper in 1923. In the same year, she published it in French in the Revue neurologique. The case, which is described in this work, was presented at the meeting of the Society of Doctors of the Child Jesus Hospital and the Neurological Society in Warsaw on January 20, 1923. The eponym “Frey Syndrome” was introduced into the medicine by Hieger in 1926 and Basse in 1932. In addition to the syndrome, Lucja Frey also described the influence of plant poisons on the degeneration of the spinal cord, topographic anatomy of the brain stem, pathologic anatomy of the motor neuron disease, casual cases of aortic root aneurysm, cystic lesions of the third ventricle of cerebrum, atypical variants of the intracranial tumors. Even though the scientific heritage of Lucja Frey is not large, each of her published works is important within the scope of world scientific collections. She died during Holocaust, most likely in Lviv ghetto.

Keywords

• łucja frey, frey’s syndrome, auriculotemporal nerve syndrome, biography, neurology, lviv