PROF. DR. OCTAVIAN PAVEL 1925 – 1988
Viorel Ghiran
In spite of being rather short, the life of this distinguished university professor was rich and prodigious in achievements and in qualitative signifi cations both for the Cluj medical school and for the history of Romanian child neurology. Although a fearless fi ghter against diseases, , the distinguished university professor was himself defeated unjustly by his own illness, before being able to conclude, in agreement with the university norms, his didactic career and to fulfi l all his plans, dreams and professional goals.
His effort, his contribution as a physician, teacher and researcher, which he achieved in a short, but extremely concentrated period by his involvement in the general eff ort of the epoch that he had served, is the expression of his exceptional native qualities. His followers remember him for his seriousness, persistence, depth of professional knowledge at all his formative stages, as consequences of the education received in his family and in society. Obliged to move his home more than once together with his family, which had modest fi nancial possibilities, even since his childhood he had a strong patriotic feeling towards his native land and a total aversion against war, social injustice and the exploitation of the Romanian people. His ideal in life, his convictions and conceptions about the world had been deeply rooted into the materialist dialectic and historic vision, which he honestly identifi ed himself with and served without reserves.
Prof. Dr. Octavian Pavel was born in Piatra Neamţ on 20th March 1925, to a modest family of clerks with traditional aspirations to fulfi lment and education, who brought up their children in the spirit of love for the warm Moldavian land and respect for our ancestors. His parents managed to give their three sons a distinguished and bright education so that each of them became a university graduate, with valuable contributions in the professional and social fi eld where they activated later. Professor Pavel spent his dreaming and charming childhood years in his native family and town, where he attended the elementary school. In 1936, the family moved to Cluj, where father took a job as administrative director of Hospital no.2, in order to facilitate quality training for the three boys who were at the beginning of their formative years. Octavian Pavel started high school in Cluj, but fi nished it in Turda (where his parents had fl ed temporarily during Horthy’s occupation of North Transylvania) passing his baccalaureate examination in 1944.
As beneficiary of exceptional conditions available after World War II for all the children with a modest social and familial background but with a strong motivation to learn, Pavel Octavian began his university studies in 1944 at the Faculty of Medicine from Cluj. Th is faculty had been moved to Sibiu temporarily and Pavel Octavian graduated it successfully in 1951.
Because of his excellent professional training, of his thirst for knowledge, and of his meeting the medical vocation, in 1948, he became extern and then intern of the newly established clinical section, which, in coming years, was to become the Child, and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Section directed by univ. conf. Maximilian Müler, a section that was required by the practice of child assistance as well as by the academic medical education with stress on prophylaxis and on mother and child health care assistance.
After graduation, in 1951, his attachment to the child and adolescent neuro-psychic problems, as well as his love for children determined him to choose the position of consulting physician at the Colony for Greek children from Tulghes (Bacau), where he remained until the end of his practical medical training stage, in 1953.
Being convinced of the need for a thorough training in the fundamental fi elds of what he intended to do further he applied for the position of university assistant, which he obtained in 1953, at the Department of Human Anatomy of the Cluj Institute of Medicine and Pharmacy, where he remained until 1955.
Since his period as medical extern and intern, he had became interested in the neurologic aspect of the child and adolescent neuropsychiatry because he realised that this aspect corresponded better to hisnpersonality structure and to his organicistic vision on the neuro-psychic pathology. Consequently, he became secondary doctor and then part time consultant at the Neurology Clinic from Cluj starting with his fi rst year as university assistant at the Discipline of Neurology, which prof. Duma Dezideriu used to coordinate. Th ere he managed to acquire a sound basis in neurology on the background of anatomy. During this period he had a series of good practice exchanges in associated disciplines, which were to shape his medical personality further (in paediatrics, ORL, dermatology, psychiatry).
Circumstances and the chance allowed him, in 1963, to see his initial dream come true and he started to work in the domain of child and adolescent neuropsychiatry and became chief primary physician of the Child Neuropsychiatry Section, a position that became vacant after the departure of Dr. Ilea Vasile to the Paclişa Child Neuropsychiatry Hospital, in Hunedoara County. Here, Dr. Pavel continued his activity only in the network of the Ministry of Health, because since 1955, the section had no longer been an educational unit. As such, he was now taking care of the consolidation of the hospital facilities, of widening the therapeutic basis and of medical investigations such as physiotherapy, EEG laboratory, and psychology laboratory. At the same time, he successfully cooperated with the discipline of child psychiatry, which had started to operate in the same building, Pavilion VIII, since 1966 when the author of this paper returned from post university doctoral studies in S.R. Czechoslovakia.
At my insistence, motivated by his high professional quality and by the felt conscience of the necessity both for a parallel discipline and for infantile neuropsychology in the diff erential training of the students from the paediatrics section, dr. Pavel accepted to come back to the academic environment. Th us, in 1971, he applied for the contest for the position of Chief of Works in 1971, being advanced as Lecturer in 1976 and then, in 1983, as Professor of child neurology, a position he kept until 1 April 1987 when he retired because of his illness.
To his regret and to the loss of the academic discipline to which he had devoted all his strengths, the beginning of his career coincided with the beginning of his chronic disease, which had gradually narrowed the fi eld of his action possibilities. Nevertheless, in his short academic career devoted to paediatric neurology he made a signifi cant contribution to the Cluj university education and to the establishment of the Paediatric Neurology discipline in our country.
By his compelling example of life and devotion, of competence and professional commitment, by everything he did for the Romanian infantile neurology as its fi rst professor and school initiator, dr. Pavel Octavian has secured himself a place at the foundation of this discipline and in the conscience of the generations to come.
His vocation as teacher and educator has imposed him ever since his fi rst academic lectures by their elevated scientifi c content and by his attractive way of presentation. His didactic style and manner are illustrated more clearly in his own autobiographic confessions, where he said: “In my whole didactic career I was guided by ethical, deontological and moral principles of educating the young generation. I wanted to inculcate into my students the spirit of work, and for work, and to shape their thinking into a rigorous scientifi c and dialectic one by combining the instructive – formative activity with the cultural and social ones. I have constantly promoted discipline, punctuality and I particularly tried to infuse my whole activity, but especially the course and the practical training sessions with active, lively, colloquial characteristics. I have followed these principles in my work with perseverance with both the undergraduates and the secondary doctors or the specialists – during the in-service training courses.”
His vision in the fi eld of his specialty is well rendered in the infantile neurology course published by the Cluj-Napoca Medicine and Pharmacy Institute under his editorship in 1973 with a second edition in 1979, when he attracted other collaborators. It constitutes the fi rst course in this specialty in Romania based on direct clinical practice and not on compilation from the specialist literature, remaining thus a landmark for the Romanian paediatric neurology.
His didactic talent and the quality of his trainings have imposed him as educative dean for a period of 5 years in his short academic career. In his assistance activity, he excelled by his gift as clinician, based on sound and multilateral education, a fact that inspired his medical decisions, his indubitable diagnoses and his clear medical thinking, envied by his students and younger colleagues. He was a great and correct physician, who enthused blind trust in parents who looked for him and who owed him morally for the rest of their lives for his competence and altruist eff orts in the treatment of their children.
He was permanently fighting with himself in order not to make any concession, any compromise to his professional conscience. His competence and quality of medical assistance, based on the many-sided training, which I have mentioned before, have been certifi ed by exceptional results in medical examinations (in 1959, for the degree of specialist in neurology and in 1961 for primary neurologist and for main researcher in neurology). Also, the exchanges of experience in the domain of electroencephalography in Bucharest in 1968 and the study stage with a WHO scholarship at the Centre of Child Epilepsy in Marseille, France under the direction of H. Gaustaut, in 1972 meant recognitions of his outstanding professional value.
His activity as teacher and doctor intertwined harmoniously with his scientific work based on a fine and balanced feeling of measure, on clean discernment, a native quality of perfect observer and a constant motivation for knowledge and the truth. The result of his scientific work is embodied in 200 scientifi c papers, out of which 72 were published in specialised publications from Romania and abroad and 3 are innovation patents. It is the expression of profound honesty, of scientific probity and accuracy, and is valuable qualitatively as any beginning should be, alien from any falseness and tendency to obtain undeserved merits at all costs.
Among his scientific contributions, one may remark those on the following areas:
— the largely spread aff ections with an impairing potential in child and adolescent neuropathology;
— more precise knowledge of the consequences of perinatal hypoxia for the ulterior neuro-psychic development of the child;
— more precise analysis of the electroencephalographic disorders in infantile pathology;
— types of infantile encephalopathy, especially the more adequate understanding of epilepsy in children;
— epidemiologic studies for the elucidation of specifi c morbidity in infantile population from Romania, of diff erent neurologic nosologic entities.
Not being satisfied with only his own research, he tried to pass on to his students his love for the scientifi c research and he coordinated scientifi cally over 30 graduation papers. At the same time, he used to urge his students to contribute with research papers to the local and national scientifi c confrontations, where he himself participated regularly and where he was well received by his peers.
He was a complex personality, with outstanding effi ciency in any of the fi elds of activity that he chose to engage in. While in his private life he used to love nature, sports, trips and fi shing, on the professional level, as a true democratic leader, he used to inspire respect and obedience in his collaborators through reciprocal esteem and a profound understanding of values. The esteem he enjoyed was based on his distinction due to great professional probity, solicitude and collegiality, since he was always capable to pronounce and sustain competent opinions, and, at the same time, to show others fl exibility and freedom of opinions and actions if their arguments were legitimate.
He was willing to grant friendship and camaraderie to those close to him, being an example of fairness, gentleness and modesty.
Dr. Pavel had understood his mission and the necessity to participate in diff erent aspects of social life, too. Thus, he was permanently involved and elected in various trade union bodies belonging either to the Ministry of Health network or to the university. Th ose who knew him loved him as a human being, for his fi ne humour, which could sometimes turn into sarcastic irony, they appreciated him as teacher and educator and they will not forget him as doctor and man with a serene and physiognomy, an optimist in relation to future and the futile inadvertencies.