Georges Marinesco (1863-1938): neurologist, neurohistologist and neuropathologist

Gheorghe Marinescu (Georges Marinesco, in French) is a Romanian physician, founder of the School of Neurology in that country. He begins his medical studies in Bucharest, then has the opportunity to reach Paris and join the School of Neurology in La Salpêtrière Hospital, lead by Jean-Martin Charcot. This trip will forever imprint the mind of Marinescu, a great friend of France, a respectful student of Charcot and a friendly colleague of many Parisian neurologists. Marinescu's works are multiple and very important. He describes the succulent hand in syringomyelia and the palmar-jaw reflex. Marinescu is also one of the first to use the cinema for medical purposes. His work as an anatomo-clinician, a method developed by Charcot, is important. We denote the description of the locus niger affected by tuberculosis in a case of parkinsonism (this description paving Etienne Brissaud's way to highlight the anatomical origin of Parkinson's disease), the original clinical description of Marinesco-Sjögren syndrome, and that of medullomyoblastoma. Marinescu is also a famous neurocytologist as evidenced by his work, La Cellule Nerveuse, published in 1909. The first volume of the book is devoted to the aspects of the normal nervous tissue: the neurofibrillar network, the chromatophilic elements, and the paranucleolar corpuscles (now known as Marinescu's bodies). The second volume of the book is almost related to features revealed by experimental lesions: chromatolysis and neuronophagia. Furthermore, Marinescu describes with Oscar Blocq, small nodules than are now regarded as the first description of senile plaques.