Jacob Churg

Jacob Churg (* July 16, 1910 in Dolginow, Russian Empire, today Dauhinawa, Rajon Wilejka, Belarus, † July 27, 2005 in New York City ) was an American pathologist.

Family

Churg grew up as the son of a Jewish medical family in Vilnius. The Father Wolf Ravich was a doctor, his mother Gita, worked as a dentist. In 1942, he married Vivian Yellow, 1943, he acquired American citizenship.

His son Andrew Churg, professor of pathology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (Canada), dealt with later related topics as the Father. Churgs second son Warren Churg is a practicing internist.

Education and work

In Vilnius (then Wilno ) Churg attended local schools and the university. He completed his medical degree here in 1933 and worked until 1934 as an assistant of the Department of Internal Medicine at the city hospital of Vilnius and the state hospital in Wilejka. There Churg focused on experimental work as an assistant of pathology at the University of Wilno. With scientific graduation in Pathology ( Dr. sc ) and the growing political uncertainty and the ever more virulent anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe becoming he left his native Poland in 1936 and went to New York City, where his uncle Louis Chargin as a known dermatologist and chief physician the Dermatology Department of the Mount Sinai Hospital worked. Here he found a position as assistant to the bacteriological laboratory.

After military service in the Second World War, Churg continued his research and devoted himself as a pathologist, together with Lotte Strauss researching pathological vascular changes.

Since 1966, Churg had an ordinary chair of pathology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and worked as a consulting pathologist for several hospitals in the states of New York and New Jersey. Churg was a consulting pathologist for many international study groups for glomerular diseases.

After the retirement Jacob Churg continued co-editor of the journals nephron, Laboratory Investigation, histopathology, ultra Structural Pathology and Contributions to Nephrology and recognized as nephrological and as a pathological expert worldwide.

Performance

The earliest studies and publications Churgs after his arrival in the United States employed in the late 1930s and early 1940s with the toxicity of sulfonamides for liver and kidney in animal experiments. From 1942 he was again only in his specialty, pathology, work.

Since 1950, Churg began with studies on renal pathology, general theme of his future scientific research tasks. In 1950, he led the renal biopsy as a standard diagnostic investigation and thereby initiated the systematic study of glomerular diseases. Since by then the histological knowledge of the renal corpuscle was limited by its complex structures, which could be represented difficult with the usual cutting and coloring techniques, Churg developed a thin -section technique and together with Prado 1956 chromotrope - aniline blue staining. The ability Churgs to bring new techniques in pathological specialty applied, was also reflected in increased use of electron microscopy.

Churg led by more than 5000 renal biopsies. The analyzes of these tissue samples were examined in his laboratory, published in many publications to various forms of glomerular diseases: focal glomerulosclerosis, membranous glomerulonephritis, congenital nephritis, diabetes mellitus, amyloidosis, nephritis, and systemic lupus erythematosus.

Among the most important publications include Churgs addition to more than 300 journal articles ten books, 40 book chapters ( including renal pathology, high-pressure disease) as well as a number of excellent atlas of renal pathology. In addition, Churg had significant influence on the development of the histological WHO classification of kidney disease. In addition to his studies on the renal pathology he also dealt with the study of asbestosis, numerous works published to the pathology of mesothelioma and other malignant neoplasms.

Works

• Influence of gonadotropic hormones upon Complement in Rabbit's Blood. Diss med 1936
• Structural Basis of Renal Disease. 1968
• Nephrology. 1979