Turkish Doctor Who Changed the Fate of "Behçet" Patients

 

Ord. Prof. Dr. Hulusi Behçet, the fırst Turkısh academıcıan with the tıtle of professor, who dıscovered Behçet's dısease, also known as blood vessel ınflammatıon, and gave hope to mıllıons of patıents, ıs commemorated on the 75st annıversary of hıs death.

Hulusi Behçet, Was a Turkish dermatologist and scientist. He described a disease of inflamed blood vessels in 1937, which is named after him as Behçet's disease.

Born to Turkish parents, as his father was an official in the Ottoman Empire, they emigrated to Damascus and he spent his early childhood there after he lost his mother to an illness.

During World War I, he served at the military hospital in Edirne as a specialist in dermatology and venereal diseases and was assigned to the head of the hospital as an assistant. After the war, between 1918 and 1919, he first went to Budapest, Hungary and then to Berlin, Germany to improve his medical knowledge. He had the opportunity to meet some well known colleagues there. After his return to Turkey, he went into private practice. In 1923, Behçet was appointed as the head physician at the Hasköy Venereal Diseases Hospital at Golden Horn in Istanbul. While he lectured at the university, he continued his private practice as well.

His first observations on Behçet's disease began with a patient he met between 1924 and 1925. According to his symptoms, the illness had been diagnosed. From the aetiology, syphilis and tuberculosis were suspected. Austrian doctors had called an unknown protozoal disease. Behçet continued to follow up the patient for many years.

In 1930, a woman suffering from irritation in her eye and with lesions in her mouth and genital regions was referred to Behçet's clinic and told him that these symptoms had been recurring for several years. He consulted the patient until 1932 and tried to diagnose the aetiological agent for tuberculosis, syphilis or mycosis etc.

Behçet, with the symptoms of these three patients whom he had followed for years, then decided that they were the symptoms of a new disease and in 1936, he described the situation in a meeting and this was published in the Archives of Dermatology and Venereal Disease. The Belgian scientists Weekers and Reginster, and the Italian Frachescetti reported some patients with similar symptoms. Therefore, European doctors had accepted the appearance of a new disease. Ophthalmologists had begun to accept "Behçet's Disease".

In 1947, at the suggestion of Mischner of the Zurich Medical Faculty during the International Medical Congress of Geneva, the finding of Behçet was named "Morbus Behçet". Though it was evaluated in the early days as "Behçet's Syndrome", "Trisymptom Behçet", and "Morbus Behçet", today the disease is universally called ’’Behçet's Disease’’ in medical literature.