The destiny of Dr. Dumitru Bagdasar, the founder of the Romanian school of neurosurgery, is one of the most remarkable stories in the history of Romanian medicine. Born on December 17, 1893, in the village of Roșiești, Vaslui County, Dumitru was the fourth child in a large family of freeholding peasants, Iancu and Smaranda Bagdasar. Coming from a modest background, he showed an exceptional ambition and thirst for knowledge from a young age—traits that would take him far beyond what his family could have imagined.

The humble childhood of a future scientist

His road to education was not an easy one. He attended primary school in the nearby village of Idricii de Sus, walking several kilometers every day, often in darkness and through harsh weather. 

The death of his mother when he was just 14 years old deepened the family’s hardships—the Bagdasar family had twelve children to support. 

Yet Dumitru never gave up on his studies. He attended the prestigious “Gh. Roșca Codreanu” High School in Bârlad, where he graduated in 1913 from the modern section, already showing a remarkable aptitude for the natural sciences.

From student to military doctor

That same year, Dumitru Bagdasar enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, taking his first steps toward a career that would change Romanian medicine forever. Because of financial difficulties, he began working while still a student—by his third year, he was employed at the Medical-Military Institute to support himself.

When World War I broke out, the young student became a front-line military doctor. He risked his life treating the wounded in battlefields, an experience that solidified his sense of duty and medical calling. 

During this period, he contracted typhus but managed to recover. After the war, he returned to his studies and, in 1922, defended his doctoral thesis titled “Contributions to the study of post-encephalitic parkinsonian syndrome”, revealing his early interest in neurology.

The first steps toward neurosurgery

Between 1922 and 1926, Bagdasar worked as an assistant physician in the Neurological Service of the Bucharest Military Hospital, under the guidance of renowned scientists Dimitrie Noica and Mihail Butoianu, who encouraged him to pursue surgical training. 

At the same time, he joined the Laboratory of Histology and Pathological Anatomy, led by Dr. Ștefan Besnea, where he realized the importance of neuroanatomy and neurohistology—disciplines that would define his future career. His collaboration with Professor Besnea lasted until the end of his life.

In 1927, Dumitru Bagdasar married Florica Ciumetti, herself a physician who would later become a leading figure in Romanian medicine, known as the founder of the national school of mental hygiene and child neuropsychiatry. 

The couple shared a passion for research and medical advancement. Between 1927 and 1929, they both specialized in neurosurgery at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, USA, working under the guidance of Professor Harvey Cushing, one of the founders of modern neurosurgery. 

The experience profoundly influenced Bagdasar’s professional growth, and during his stay in the U.S., he published in The American Journal of Pathology the studies “The surgical treatment of cerebral gummas” and “The intercerebral chordoblastoma.”

Challenges and the beginnings of his career in Romania

Upon returning to Romania in 1929, the Bagdasars encountered serious obstacles. The authorities refused to assign them to urban hospitals, and they were instead sent to work in rural areas. 

Between 1929 and 1931, Dumitru Bagdasar worked as a neuropsychiatrist in Jimbolia, where he performed his first neurosurgical operations. From 1931 to 1933, he headed the Neurology Department of the Nervous Diseases Hospital in Cernăuți, publishing his first scientific papers on neurosurgery.

In 1934, he returned to Bucharest, working initially at the Emergency Hospital. A year later, he successfully obtained approval to establish a small neurosurgery unit with ten beds and a single operating room at the Central Hospital for Nervous and Mental Diseases in Bucharest. 

This was the foundation of the future Neurosurgery Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine. His wife, Florica, worked alongside him during surgeries, offering constant professional and personal support.

University professor and Minister of Health

After 1945, Dumitru Bagdasar was appointed professor of neurosurgical clinic at the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest and later became Minister of Health in the government led by Dr. Petru Groza. 

Beyond his medical career, he was deeply concerned with Romania’s social issues, malnutrition, infant mortality, illiteracy, and lack of hygiene and medical care in rural areas. These experiences shaped his left-wing political convictions and social commitment.

As Minister of Health, he reorganized the national healthcare system, creating 60 new rural medical districts, 100 rural maternity centers, and several sanatoriums. He led national campaigns against typhus, typhoid fever, and relapsing fever and supported the establishment of the Institute of Endocrinology in Bucharest in 1946. His reforms brought modern public health principles to Romania, emphasizing prevention, hygiene, and equal access to care.

Innovations and major contributions to neurosurgery

Professor Bagdasar’s surgical innovations made him one of the leading neurosurgeons of his time. Along with his students State Drăgănescu and Constantin Arseni, he developed new surgical techniques, including performing cordotomy, one of the first such procedures in Europe. 

Between 1935 and 1945 alone, he performed over 1,800 surgeries on the nervous system, including 492 spinal operations. Patients came not only from Romania but also from Hungary, Bulgaria, and even Palestine.

He published a series of landmark scientific works, including “Orbital and orbitocranial osteomas” (1939), “Acute cranio-cerebral trauma” (1940), “Cerebral tuberculoma” (1940), “Cerebellar tumors” (1943), and “Lindau’s disease” (1944). In his final years, he collaborated on Romania’s first “Treatise on Neurosurgery”, which was published posthumously in 1948.

The legacy of a life devoted to science

Dumitru Bagdasar passed away on July 16, 1946, at only 52 years old, due to a cerebral metastasis that he himself had diagnosed and monitored. Two months later, his wife Florica Bagdasar became Romania’s first female Minister of Health, continuing his work

In 1948, Dumitru Bagdasar was posthumously elected a member of the Romanian Academy, and in 1951, his and Arseni’s research was published in French as “Traité de Neurochirurgie”.

In 1975, his disciple Constantin Arseni founded in Bucharest the “Prof. Dr. D. Bagdasar” Clinical Hospital, in honor of his mentor. The hospital became an emergency facility in 1993 and, in 2001, was renamed the “Bagdasar-Arseni Emergency Clinical Hospital”, now one of Romania’s most renowned medical institutions. 

A memorial plaque still stands on the building at 13 Speranței Street in Bucharest, marking the residence of Dumitru and Florica Bagdasar—two pioneers of Romanian medicine.

The life of Dr. Dumitru Bagdasar remains a story of dedication, courage, and scientific excellence. From a poor peasant child in Vaslui, he rose to become the founder of Romanian neurosurgery, trained generations of physicians, and placed Romania on the international map of medical science. 

His legacy endures as proof that perseverance, education, and faith in humanity can overcome any obstacle and leave an indelible mark on a nation’s history.

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