Prof. Aleksandar Josifovich Ignjatovski, Founder and First Director of the Clinic for Internal Medicine and the First Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje, R. Macedonia

Aleksandar J. Ignjatovski was born in the Smolensk Region, Russia, on 18.03.1875. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in St. Petersburg in 1899 where he started specialization in internal medicine and continued in Berlin, Heidelberg, Munich and Paris. In 1905 he was elected assistant professor in St. Petersburg, continued as an associate professor in Odessa in 1908 and a full-time professor in 1912 in Warsaw. During the October Revolution, he was the Head of the Internal Clinic in Rostov, and in 1920 he emigrated to Belgrade. In 1922 he was appointed full professor and Director of the First Internal Clinic at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, which he established, developed and managed until his retirement in 1946. In 1948 he moved to Skopje as a full professor and first Director of the Internal Clinic at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje. He studied the pathogenesis of arteriosclerosis and first proved it experimentally, and published a paper in 1908, indicating that it was associated with higher blood cholesterol level. He also dealt with immunobiology and infectious diseases, in particular tuberculosis and tetanus. Prof. A. Ignjatovski was an excellent clinician, teacher and scientist, who published over 80 papers. His most important textbooks are “Clinical Semiotics and Symptomatic Therapy”, in two editions, in Russian (1919) and in Serbian (1929-37), and “The Basics of Internal Propedeutics” in three volumes, published in Skopje in 1952, 1954 and 1963. The work of Prof. A. Ignjatovski, as a leading clinician and a great teacher and scientist, is embedded in the development of internal medicine, and medicine in general, in Russia, Serbia and Macedonia. The bright memorial of the founder and first director of the Internal Medicine Clinic and the first Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Skopje has been permanently incorporated in the history of medicine in R. Macedonia. Prof. A. Ignjatovski died on 18.08.1955.