Paul Ghalioungui or Ghalioungi (1908–1987), MD (Cairo), MRCP (Lond), Professor of Medicine and former Chairman of Internal Medicine department, Ain Shams University Faculty of Medicine. An Egyptian endocrinologist, historian of Egyptian medicine, Egyptologist and an authority on Pharaonic medicine, he wrote a vivid history of Egyptian medicine in English, French, Arabic, German, and Spanish.

Life

Ghalioungui was born in Mansoura, Egypt to a Greek Orthodox family of Syro-Lebanese descent. An Egyptian by birth, education, and practice, he writes of present and past Egyptian medicine (in Arabic, English and French) as only a clinician could write whose hobby was Egyptian archaeology and medical history. "It has long been my conviction that the medical history of a nation should be written by a native. A practising physician, Dr. Ghalioungui proves this contention." He also had two sons in the early 1940s. He spent some time in Kuwait during the 1970s. Mohammad Kamel Hussein (MKH), known in Egypt as the Father of Orthopedics, was an exemplary teacher and philosopher. He encouraged both Prof. Paul Ghalioungi, head of internal medicine and Prof. Ahmed Ammar, the distinguished gynecologist in Ain Shams Medical College, to join him in pursuing the study of ancient Egyptian medicine. The great orthopedic surgeon had a great interest in studying and researching the history of medicine, especially of Ancient Egyptians. Paul Ghalioungi was president of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Medicine, Egypt-Cairo December 26, 1984 – January 1, 1985. The main theme was Egyptian medicine up to the 3rd century of the Christian era, Islamic medicine, and east–west relations. Ghaliounghui was acquainted with both pharaonic medicine and modern medicine. A man of much influence, he was the founder and member of a large number of medical societies in Egypt, the Swiss and American societies of endocrinology, the Royal Society of Medicine and the International Society of the History of Medicine. Throughout his illustrious career, he spent prolonged periods in Austria, England, France, Kuwait, Switzerland and the United States and lived by the following phrase: "Life is short. Art is long. Experience is fallible. Opportunity is fleeting. Judgment is difficult" which appears frequently and consistently in much of his lectures and books. He had many connections and correspondence with international scientists. Some of his letters to them are preserved abroad. Perhaps his interest in the history of medicine started from publishing his paper "Sur deux formes d'obésité représentées dans l'Égypte ancienne" on obesity and its types in Ancient Egypt, which represented a connection between his work as an endocrinologist and the history of medicine.

Education

Scientific and clinical career

Scientific contributions

About capillaries theory he wrote: Ibn al-Nafis had an insight into what would become a larger theory of the capillary circulation in his assertion that the pulmonary vein receives what comes out of the pulmonary artery, this being the reason for the existence of perceptible passages between the two."

Publications

Publishing editor

Editor

Translator

Revision

Author

Books

1980s

1970s

1960s

1950s

Articles

Articles on History of Medicine

1980s

1970s

1960s

1950s

Medical Articles

Audio recordings

Legacy

His books and manuscripts has been dedicated after his death by his family to Ain Shams University Hospital Library, which was named after him as the Paul Ghalioungui Memorial Library.