Physiopathologie du Systeme Nerveux : . Du Mecanisme au Diagnostic. Preface de Clovis Vincent

Paul Cossa

Masson & Co., 1950

[Previously owned by Dr. George B. Udvarhelyi.] Bound in publisher's cloth. Hardcover. Good binding and cover. Shelf wear. Owner's name and stamp on title page, else unmarked. 

"Dr. George B. Udvarhelyi was an internationally known Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon who established the Office of Cultural Affairs at the East Baltimore medical school. During World War II, Dr. Udvarhelyi was a member of the Hungarian underground, which worked against the Nazi occupation. He served as a messenger to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Budapest who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi extermination by granting them Swedish passports and offering them a diplomatic haven. In February 1948, he boarded a steamer in Genoa, Italy, for a voyage that would take him to Argentina and a position as a surgical resident in the division of neurological surgery at the Hospital Espanol in Cordoba. Walking the decks of the ship, Dr. Udvarhelyi was astonished to see several passengers who were former SS military and Nazi representatives he had known in Budapest, now dressed in civilian clothes and fleeing to exile in South America. "It suddenly dawned on me that Argentina may be a country which could be considered a refuge for all those dubious elements who survived the war and changed personalities and clothes while trying to embark on a new existence," he wrote in an unpublished memoir. He was working at the Institute of Neurosurgery at the University of Buenos Aires when he caught his first glimpse of Eva Peron, the glamorous wife of dictator Juan D. Peron, standing on a balcony. She would later become his patient. 'She was talking about the descamisados, shirtless people, and the simple life, while wearing a million dollars' worth of jewelry,' he told a Sun reporter in a 2005 interview. 'Eva was of average height. She was very elegant, wore lots of jewelry and had beautiful hair. She had an elegant walk and had learned how to behave like a lady despite her background,' he said. 'She was a very lively person who made eye contact and would gesticulate during conversation.' After she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, Dr. Udvarhelyi said a prefrontal lobotomy was performed to relieve the pain. Eva Peron was 33 when she died in 1952, and he recalled the hysterical grief that swept Argentina. One of Dr. Udvarhelyi's greatest surgical accomplishments was bringing from France to Hopkins in the late 1960s the microsurgery technique that went through the nose to the base of the brain to remove pituitary tumors." - Baltimore Sun Obit.