Alfons Siewert

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Alfons Karlovich Siewert
Born1872
Died1922
NationalityUkrainian
OccupationPhysician
Known forSiewert-Kartagener syndrome (Primary ciliary dyskinesia)
Children2 sons (Vladimir and Georgiy), 1 daughter (Maria)

Alfons Karlovich Siewert (1872–1922), also called Alfons Karlovich Zivert or Alfonse-Ferdinand-Julius-Zivert, was a Ukrainian physician, who hailed from a German family closely allied to the Tsar and Imperial Russia. He is known for his eponymous contribution to the Siewert-Kartagener syndrome (Primary ciliary dyskinesia).[1]

Early life

Siewert's father was born in Bialystok, Poland. After working in various places in postal services, he eventually became a chief in the 'Black Cabinet' of Kiev, dealing in censorship and intelligence. In 1907. he and his family were granted noble status by the Tsar. He married Johanna Dreyer, who bore four sons and two daughters, the eldest of which was Alfons. One of his brothers, Erich, followed in his father's footsteps. Alfons chose to enter into a medical career, and after gaining his qualifications, worked throughout his life at his alma mater, the Saint Vladimir University of Kiev (now National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv).[2]

Marriage

Siewert married the daughter of a well-known Russian musician V.V.Puholsky. They had 2 sons, Vladimir and Georgiy, and a daughter, Maria. The elder son Vladimir was a monarchist, and opposed Bolshevism throughout his life. Arrested by the Cheka in 1919, he was re-arrested in 1929 and exiled to Siberia in 1932. Released again some years later, he was once again imprisoned for belonging to a Tsarist and fascist organisation. He was sentenced to death and shot in 1938.[3][2]

Contributions

He was the first person to report a case of bronchiectasis with situs inversus,[4] in 1904, although he reported it in a Russian publication some two years before then. His 1904 report of the case, and Kartagener's report of several cases in 1933,[5] is now known as the Siewert-Kartagener syndrome. Later, the syndrome included male infertility. Its characterisation as a primary ciliary dyskinesia was not made until after the advent of TEM, by Azfelius in 1976[6] when he showed it to be a disorder of motility of cilia and flagella, This would exclude primary cilia (nodal) which are thought to be implicated in the anomaly of the situs inversus part of the syndrome.[7]

Siewert's main interests were in cardiovascular medicine and toxicology. Early research work was on the effect of various alcohols and toxins on the heart and the circulation. In 1904, he published a paper on the manometric measurements of the isolated mammalian heart.[8] Strophanthin, also known as ouabain, an ancient arrow poison used in eastern Africa, had attracted the attentions of European pharmacologists at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1882, ouabain was isolated from the plant by the French chemist Léon-Albert Arnaud and identified as a cardiac glycoside.[9][10] Siewert studied the effects of the glycoside on the heart and blood pressure. He also conducted studies on the biochemical changes in urine as a result of eating meat in 1912,[11] and on diastole in 1922[12]

References

  1. ^ McManus, Chris (February 2004). "Eponymous but anonymous: who was Dr Siewert?". The Lancet. 363 (9409): 662. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(04)15611-0. PMID 14987904. S2CID 25967658.
  2. ^ a b Churilov, LP (2020). "A Man behind a Syndrome: Who was Doctor Zivert?" (PDF). Lung, Pulmonary & Respiratory Research Journal. 3 (1): 120.
  3. ^ "Alfons Karlovich Zivert".
  4. ^ Siewert, AK (1904). "Ueber einen Fall von Bronchiectasie bei einem Patienten mit Situs inversus viscerum" [About a case of bronchiectasis in a patient with situs inversus viscerum]. Berliner klinische Wochenschrift (in German). 41: 139–141.
  5. ^ Kartagener, M. (September 1933). "Zur Pathogenese der Bronchiektasien" [On the pathogenesis of bronchiectasis]. Beiträge zur Klinik der Tuberkulose und spezifischen Tuberkulose-Forschung (in German). 83 (4): 489–501. doi:10.1007/BF02141468. S2CID 7708592.
  6. ^ Afzelius, B. (23 July 1976). "A human syndrome caused by immotile cilia". Science. 193 (4250): 317–319. doi:10.1126/science.1084576. PMID 1084576.
  7. ^ Bloodgood, Robert A. (2009). "From Central to Rudimentary to Primary: The History of an Underappreciated Organelle Whose Time Has Come.The Primary Cilium". Primary Cilia. Methods in Cell Biology. Vol. 94. pp. 2–52. doi:10.1016/S0091-679X(08)94001-2. ISBN 978-0-12-375024-2. PMID 20362083.
  8. ^ Siewert, A. (1 April 1904). "Ueber ein Verfahren der manometrischen Registrirung der Zusammenziehungen des isolirten Säugethierherzens" [A method of manometric registration of the contractions of the isolated mammalian heart]. Archiv für die gesamte Physiologie des Menschen und der Tiere (in German). 102 (7): 364–372. doi:10.1007/BF01678181. S2CID 32946210. Cited in McManus 2004
  9. ^ Rochebrune, AT; Arnaud, A (1882). Recherches Chimiques et Toxico-Physiologiques sur le Ouabaïo Poison a Flèches des Çomalis [Chemical and Toxico-Physiological Research on Ouabaïo Poison has Arrows of Çomalis] (in French). Paris: Challamel. OCLC 265018584.[page needed]
  10. ^ Wisniak, Jaime (2018). "Léon-Albert Arnaud". Revista CENIC Ciencias Biológicas (in Spanish). 49 (2): 34–45. Gale A624030655.
  11. ^ Siewert, A; Zebrowski, E (1912). "Ueber den komparativen Einfluss des weissen und dunklen Fleisches auf die Ausscheidung von Harnsäure und von anderen stickstoffhaltigen Substanzen im Harn" [About the comparative influence of white and dark meat on the excretion of uric acid and other nitrogenous substances in the urine]. Zeitschrift für klinische Medizin (in German). 75: 331–358.
  12. ^ Siewert, A. K. (December 1922). "Über aktive Diastole" [About active diastole]. Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Experimentelle Medizin (in German). 28 (1): 324–346. doi:10.1007/BF02622924. S2CID 84457770.
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