ZVONIMIR SUŠIĆ – DOYEN OF CROATIAN NEUROPSYCHIATRY IN THE 20th CENTURY

Abstract

Summary. There are three distinct phases in the life of Zvonimir Sušić – neurologist, psychiatrist, forensic expert, educator, teacher, translator, and erudite of general and professional knowledge – Zagreb, Rijeka and Zadar phase. In Zagreb (1926–1946) he was promoted to physician (1932), there he was a student tutor, then the assistant at the Physiology Institute of the Medical Faculty; volunteer, hospital doctor (he got the specialization in 1938), assistant and head doctor of the Hospital for Mental Diseases in Vrapče, and the assistant professor (1941) at the Neuropsychiatric Department of the Zagreb University. In Rijeka (1947–1959) he reorganized Psychiatric and established the Neurology Department of the General Hospital »Brothers Dr. Sobol« and, at first, he was the honorary professor, then assistant professor and associate professor of neuro¬logy and psychiatry at the Medical Faculty of Rijeka. In Zadar (1960–1968) he was the manager of the Ugljan Hospital. He published approximately 100 works in the field of clinical neurology, neuropathology, psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. His works on cortical presentation of the body scheme, hallucinations, tuberous sclerosis, pregnancy and multiple sclerosis, pathohistology of demyelisation, toxic neuritis, epilepsies, nervous manifestations of Malta fever, herpetic infections, pathogenesis of convulsive syndromes, psychiatric terminology, therapies of Parkinson disease and schizophrenia, ability of making will, organization of the psychiatric service, were published in national and prestigious European journals, and often cited. He wrote chapters in psychiatric handbooks and special notes in encyclopedic editions. Together with Stanislav Župić he was the author of the first and only psychodrama in Croatia. He was one of the pioneers of neuropathology in Croatia because he founded the Neuropathology Laboratory in Vrapče Hospital in 1936. He had a remarkable preciseness in examining the patient. He was frequent and imaginative lecturer in various sections in Croatian Medical Association and other public institutions. As a gifted polyglot he was occupied by the translation work when retired. In our, till then Middle-European culture-oriented medical area, he introduced values and patterns of French neurological and German neuropathological schools.