Sir Marc Armand Ruffer, MD: The early years, 1878–1896

Abstract

A founder of paleopathology, the study of disease in ancient human remains, Sir Marc Armand Ruffer, MD (1859–1917) served in Egypt, from 1896 to 1917, as a public-health administrator, epidemiologist, and pathologist. He was professor of Bacteriology at the Cairo Medical School, President of the Sanitary, Maritime, and Quarantine Council, member of the Indian Plague Commission, and author or co-author of 40 papers in palaeopathology. However, little is known of his early professional life, which encompassed his education, medical training, and research in England and France. The pre-Egyptian period, 1878 to 1896, was a time of extraordinary activity. Acquiring four academic Degrees at Oxford University and clinical experience at the University College Hospital, London (1878–1889), he was the clinical assistant of Louis Pasteur during the anti-rabies campaign (autumn 1889), interim President of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine (1893–1896), and immunology researcher (1890–1895), in London and Paris, under the guidance of Élie Metchnikoff (1845–1916). Ruffer developed the diphtheria antitoxin in Britain. In addition to a dissertation on hydrocephalus, he composed or co-authored 34 papers. A prolific writer, linguist, clinician, and administrator, he explored several medical sub-disciplines before concentrating on palaeopathology.

The clinical method, model competence in the learning medical education

“…Empirical forms began with the appearance of the human being as a society, as demonstrated by Marc Armand Ruffer, who described what was achieved by the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures in the papyri that dated back to 4000 BC. Conversely, he highlighted the Hindu, Hebrew and Chinese medicine, with records that range from the 26 th century BC to the 2 nd century AD 3 . Subsequently, medicine in classical Greece Hippocrates and his work with the 50 Corpus Treaties Hippocratic, the Cyrene medical schools (4 th and 3 rd centuries BC), Rhodes, Cnidus, Croton, Alcmaeon, Pergamon, as well as the school of Alexandria by Herophilus, Erasistratus, and Galen 4 on the part of the Greco-Roman era, Galen of Pergamon (129-216 AD).…”